


Shake Our Souls

by intentioncraft



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Beta Benny, Beta/Omega, Blood, Canon-Typical Violence, Discussion of Abortion, Dubious Consent, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Flashbacks, Hurt Dean, M/M, Mild Sexual Content, Mpreg, Omega Dean, PTSD, Past Castiel/Dean Winchester, Pregnant Dean, Self-Harm, Slurs, Suicide Attempt, Threats of Rape/Non-Con
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-08
Updated: 2016-07-05
Packaged: 2018-03-16 23:45:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 26,862
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3507086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/intentioncraft/pseuds/intentioncraft
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If Dean has to spend one more minute in Kansas feeling as though any second phantom fists will finish the job started in that crypt, feeling like he’s speaking to brick walls instead of his brother for all the good it does, feeling like every time he takes a shower the warm water is blood washing over his smooth, unhurt skin and disappearing down the drain—</p><p>He’ll take this one last risk just to get the hell away from those memories.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Post 8.17 canon divergence. Unbeta'd. It's just been sitting in my drafts folder for like ten months. Crossposted to [tumblr](http://intentioncrafts.tumblr.com/post/113092941553/dean-benny-abo-verse-canon-divergence-from).

Storm clouds ride in a line across the evening Kansas horizon, purple and green and curled like claws to the flat landscape below. Dean ignores the frenzied alerts from his phone sitting in the passenger seat. It’s either the weather app he doesn’t know how to turn off telling him to take cover now, or Sam telling him to turn the fuck around before he gets sucked into a tornado.

He peers through the passenger’s side window to the southwest, he smirks even though the hair on his arms is standing up to the energy building in the atmosphere. The storm will be on him in a few minutes, so even if he wanted to turn back, he couldn’t. If he drives through at top speed, it’ll be short and he’ll come out the other side unscathed. Most days this would fall under “fucking stupid” especially given Dean's current condition, but right now it’s a calculated risk.

Lightning darts from one part of the storm to another and the sonic boom that follows stills Dean’s heart in his chest.

He floors it, watches the speedometer rise to seventy, then eighty miles and hour, hand on the wheel guiding him south. His other hand crawls over his stomach and settles just above his belly-button, thumb brushing over the new bump there. He almost says something reassuring to it, but can’t find any honest words in him to speak out loud.

Driving through an early summer storm like this is careless and the guilt boils slowly in his gut, but if he has to spend one more minute in Kansas feeling as though any second phantom fists will finish the job started in that crypt, feeling like he’s speaking to brick walls instead of his brother for all the good it does, feeling like every time he takes a shower the warm water is blood washing over his smooth, unhurt skin and disappearing down the drain—

He’ll take this one last risk just to get the hell away from those memories.

He's only sorry if it doesn't work.

—

“Dean?”

Dean doesn’t even thinking about quipping at Benny how he seemed to know right away who was calling when he knows that the guy sure as hell doesn’t have call display on that old brick of his. It just doesn’t seem right to poke fun at the fact that the outcast vampire doesn’t have any friends but Dean himself, mostly thanks to Dean.

Plus, he’s just not in the mood for jokes.

“Yeah,” his sheepish reply. Their last phone call didn’t exactly leave them on good terms, at least from Dean’s perspective. That’s on him, too, he guesses.

He presses the heel of his palm into the steering wheel, arches his back and stretches his legs in the footwell, sore from driving, hands aching from gripping the wheel. He pulled over at the second rest stop he came across, the sky darkening into evening but crystal clear without a single suggestion of the chaos that tore through just little over an hour ago but for a few puddles here and there.

“How’ve you been?”

“Oh,” Benny’s voice is muffled by the sound of rain, lighter than the storm that Dean just passed through. He must not be inside because he’s speaking in a quiet voice, sitting somewhere with a door or window open, probably. That sounds nice, peaceful, “I’ve been better.”

“You’re hangin’ in there, though?”

Benny’s smirk sounds over the line, “Strict diet of nothing. And whatever pelicans I can get.”

Dean grimaces, “How’s pelican?”

“Watery. Fast.”

A burst of laughter echoes inside the Impala and Dean realizes with a sense of detachment that it’s him. He’s not sure how he feels about that, that he can still laugh.

“How ‘bout you, Dean? Keeping well?” Benny’s tone dares him to lie.

He elects to parrot Benny instead, “Been better.”

“Ain’t that it,” Benny doesn’t pursue that thread,and Dean is grateful because he still hasn’t located the words to describe what he’s feeling. About anything — himself, Cas, Sam, his baby. So he just doesn’t go there for now.

“I don’t suppose you called just to see if I was eating well. What’s on your mind?”

Dean makes a face at his reflection in the rear-view mirror. Of course, he called for a reason. Of course, because he’s an omega and omegas are pathetic and needy and can’t take care of themselves, and Dean’s the worst in that way. It’d be better for Benny if he just hangs up right then and there, maybe offering a quick apology first for wasting Benny’s time.

The patient silence on the other end of the line, however, reminds him of the tense nights in Purgatory. Thirsty and jittery and fevered, sitting far enough away from Benny that he couldn’t smell the absolute wrongness, the dead, pointless stench of a vampire-beta, while he went through his heats unsatisfied. He did his best to hide it from Benny but vampires have this extra keen sense of smell and Dean reeked of all sorts of desperation during those nights.

So he filled the gnawing void left by alcohol and sex with talk. Senseless chatter about anything that passed over his mind, stuff that wouldn’t normally entertain Dean. And Dean would reply with stuff that wouldn’t normally have made it past all the carefully constructed barricades and mental checkpoints built up over years of repression, never mind his lips.

Benny can probably sense that same desperation, even over a phone line. He wouldn’t protest if Dean tried to hang up now, but he also wouldn’t turn Dean away if he asked.

“Um, listen. You got a place we could meet at?”

Benny names a town on the coast in Louisiana and a restaurant that Dean’s never heard of, probably a local joint, one that Benny knows Dean would probably like with plasticky booths and waitresses named Debbie or Angie or Maggie, and Dean scribbles it down on a receipt he finds after some digging in the glove box, “Thanks, Benny. I really owe you one.

“No,” Benny replies, exasperated, “You don’t.”

“I’m sorry,” Dean’s voice wavers and he feels like an idiot.

“Just come in one piece, chief.”

—

A second after he climbs out of the Impala in the parking lot of some frilly looking diner called Gretchen’s Dean remembers that he forgot to mention one very important thing, or avoided mentioning it because he likes to forget that it even exists most of the time himself. Benny’s nostrils flare and his eyes dart to Dean’s mid-section, hidden by a loose t-shirt and one of his larger button-ups. Without registering the waves of concern rolling off the beta, Dean’s arms come up to fold over his belly and protect.

“That’s new,” Benny remarks. His voice is neutral, but not cold.

“Sorry, I shoulda—”

“I’m sure you had your reasons,” Benny’s expression moves gracefully from shock and suspicion to his usual easy warmth, just like that. Dean breathes out in quiet relief as he takes three long strides into Benny’s space. He smells like beta and vampire, not totally unremarkable when he’s not in heat, but also salt water and gasoline and something sweet that reminds Dean of one of any cafes across the country. For some reason he can picture perfectly Benny sipping coffee, black, the same as Dean likes his. The combination of smells triggers a flood of instincts in Dean and he practically stumbles into Benny’s arms.

As he pushes his nose down into Benny’s shoulder, it doesn’t register to him yet that he’s dragging someone into his mess, someone who has enough on his plate without having a pregnant omega on the run to look out for. Someone who doesn’t have any reason to give Dean anymore than he already has, especially since it’s thanks to Dean’s carelessness in dealing with Sam and Martin that Benny doesn’t have much left to give. But the guilt and stress that had been squirming around inside him on the drive to the coast scatters from the lightness bursting in his chest when Benny’s arms come around him, cool and soft, drawn around him tight and Dean feels like things are evening out, steadying, for the first time in months.

He’d like to keep it that way. But it’s difficult to ask, it’ll be even more difficult to pull off.

Benny loosens his hold around Dean and holds him at an arm’s length, one hand on Dean’s collarbone and the other on his shoulder, glancing down at his bump once more before meeting Dean’s eyes again. In spite of everything, he smiles, like he's proud or — fuck it all —  _excited_.

Dean wills his face to co-operate, and pulls his mouth into a smile. 

—

"Just one thing: Should I expect anymore visitors after you?"

It's clear that he means alphas, the alpha that knocked him up, specifically. Dean isn’t sure if Benny’s guessed the identity of the father or not. Not that Benny would care, most likely, because Benny's rarely judged Dean's choices, even his bad ones. Under normal circumstances, Dean would say that, yeah, there's no way he was tracked. The only people who might be able to guess who Dean ran off to are Sam and Cas. Sam can't track him, and even if Cas wanted to, Dean didn't plan on letting him in.

Blood flows thick from the cut he makes in his arm, just below his elbow, and he daubs in onto the walls of Benny's shitty little houseboat meticulously, creating the proper sigils for warding and protection with perfect concentration. He doesn't even think about what he's done until he hears a low growl from the corner of the room, and he whirls around red-handed to find Benny standing hunched like a gargoyle, covering the lower half of his face and making a fist with his other hand.

"Benny — shit — sorry," Dean splutters and attempts to cover up the smell with the rag hanging out the back of his pocket, "I wasn't even thinking, fuck." Of course, great idea, Dean. Open up a fresh vein and start finger painting in a vampire's house, real smart. He sideways glances at his half-finished sigil despondently. 

"No worries. A little warning would've been nice is all," the vampire gulps. He sounds strained and Dean can't imagine how much energy he must be exerting to control his instincts. There hadn't even been any open wounds when he dropped in on Lisa and he could barely see straight for how hungry it made him to be around her, "Finish up your doodling, though. If it'll work."

"It will," Dean replies, removing the rag stickily and dragging his fingers over the wall to complete the warding marks. His arm sears from the cut, not the deepest he's made but deep enough that it bled sluggishly through the cloth in no time. He feels a twinge of worry for the baby. He'll have to start taking better care of his body if he's going to do this. Maybe even go see a doctor.

"Does it make a difference? Me being pregnant and all?"

"You mean do you smell even more edible than ever? Matter of fact, yes," Benny says nasally, "Fortunately for you, I also want to destroy anything that comes near you with less than good intentions, including myself."

"That's sweet."

"It's the truth," Benny says. He's opening a window, but it sticks so he gives it a good shove. The smell of the ocean creeps in everywhere, soaked into the floorboards, staled. But it gusts in anew and Dean inhales with Benny, the metallic smell of blood dulled by salt, wind, and bird shit. 

His wound is still too fresh to approach Benny, but Dean wants to kiss him, gratitude sitting on his tongue, but he's already thanked Benny at least four dozen times. He says as much and thanks Benny yet again. Benny responds with a short laugh.

"In a bit. I ain't going anywhere."

Dean smiles, easier this time, and hopefully it'll be even easier the next time, "I know."


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean _hates_ sitting around idly while there are things to be taken apart and fixed. There's always something to fix.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm bumping up the rating on this and editing the tags. Please check them before continuing! Still not beta'd because I'm just putting together the scraps I had written a while ago.

He’s sitting in a clinic waiting for the receptionist to call his name. The walls are covered in pastel coloured posters. Ads for omega contraceptives, adoption agencies, parenting websites that he can't visit because he doesn't have a computer or a phone and Benny's boat certainly doesn't have internet. The very pregnant omega next to him sits with a thin tablet in her lap, cheeks lifting excitedly as she tells Dean how big her baby is at seven months compared to a fruit he’s never even heard of. People get excited about crap like that, useless, but fun, information, he’s found out.

When he asks to see it, he flicks back up to sixteen weeks. Onion. He passes it back again.

“Hon, you said you were twenty-two weeks.” She asks, barely a question. He says nothing back.

Benny didn’t want to come with him, which made sense. Vampires don’t do well in crowded public areas, never mind omega-exclusive medical clinics filled with all sorts of blood samples, but he’s surrounded by alpha-omega couples, and a lone pregnant omega stands out in that kind of company. Hormones heighten his senses and he can smell the scrutiny and distaste directed at him. At least the woman next to him, also alone, has a mate. At least she smells like she belongs to someone.

Dean only smells unwanted.

Of course, he knows that’s not the case. He’s the one who ran away, after all.

He thinks about holding an onion in his hand, even imagines a fucking colour — purple — with his palm curled around it protectively, but it's still not big enough to cover the whole thing. A cold stone slab with angelic chicken scratch is in the other hand, and that's heavy as hell. How easy it could have been to smash it by accident, smash both. Some might call it a goddamned miracle that everybody survived.

So maybe he’s supposed to feel _lucky_. Grateful. Fucking blessed.

The receptionist finally calls on him, possibly mispronouncing his fake surname but he can’t be certain. He picked this one at random out of the phone book he found at the payphone down the street.

 _It’s not your fault, Dean_ , Sam said, _you did what you thought was best_ , meaning there must be fault somewhere, meaning something had happened in that crypt that shouldn’t have happened. Dean wonders what it was, if a different choice could have been made, when, what would be the outcome, and whose choice it was to make.

—

They have a bed — at least that's what they call it — that creaks if they so much as breathe too deep and it hits the wall no matter how gently they fuck in it. It came with the boat, apparently, and smells musty like old sea water and fish but after a few days Dean gets used to everything smelling like that. But, it’s still crickety as hell. Dean can’t even sigh in his sleep without Benny hearing him, and his nightmares are always cut off by a broad, heavy hand between his shoulder blades, or an arm wrapped lightly around his middle, over his stomach, a gentle squeeze, to keep him from falling out of bed onto the hard floor.

Sometimes, he just wakes up because the baby is kicking the shit out of his insides. Or he has to puke. Or he has to take a tiny but urgent piss because there’s a now-papaya-sized person playing bouncy castle on his bladder.

The nice thing about Benny is that he doesn’t ask. He waits.

Dean talks when he wants to, and he’s quiet when he wants to be as well. Either way, Benny listens to him, to his words or to his silence. And when Benny needs him to, Dean listens to him as well.

The talking — he’s learned it isn’t about spilling your guts to relieve pressure. _Letting it out_ is what Sam would call it, _pop the cork, quit bottling it all up_ , he’d say, and Dean hated that. As if he were simply a container that’s too full, as if _letting it out_ would disengage him from the shit piling up on him so high that he can barely walk sometimes.

But he’s not just a container to be used and filled. That _shit_ is all a part of him. That _shit_ is what has helped defined who was was since he was four fucking years old. 

It’s talking to the right person at the right time, that's what matters. Spilling your guts, sure, but then having your hands guided, or just simply fucking held, as you try to sort it all out again. It isn’t about releasing his feelings so they go away. It’s about putting them in order so he can keep them, make them useful.

More useful, that is. 

“I didn’t tell him, you know.”

“Didn’t tell who what?” Benny, sitting across from Dean at the tiny table in the kitchen with their knees bumping together, looks up from his blood bag. He recently stocked up thanks to Dean, and he really savours those things, makes one last a whole weekend. But Dean knows he starves because of it.

Dean balances for a moment on the confession, wondering if it’s the right time yet. Wondering if there _is_ even a right time at all to announce the identity of your baby-daddy to the beta who’s already seemed to accept it as his own, judging by the growing stack of parenting books taking up precious space on the counter.

“Cas,” Dean says. It’s odd how the name used to make his insides squirm, longing, and now it just makes him ache, throb with memory “I figured he would just…know. But—” he furrows his brow and covers his eyes with his hands, which is a stupid thing to do because the darkness puts him right back there, stone walls closing in on him, the smell of ancient dust clogging his lungs, already burning from gasping and begging, the look in Castiel’s eyes when he picked up the tablet and held it with both hands and told Dean that he had to protect the tablet.

Smashing the tablet probably would have been the wrong choice, too.

When he finally opens his eyes, the soggy, humid light filtering through the windows making his eyes water, Benny’s sealed off his bag and put it down, concern etched into his lines. If there are words to help Dean, Benny doesn’t seem to know them, either.

But, at the very least, he seems to know that he doesn't know.

—

"Do you wanna come grocery shopping with me?" Benny peers around the tiny refrigerator door. Dean's busy dismantling an old Walkman he'd picked up at a pawn shop. Pieces of it lie arranged like the work of a high school art student. Dean picks up individual parts methodically, scrutinizing them before placing them back down on the table. Benny watches him, pity mixed with guilt. After all, Benny's the one who disallowed Dean from crawling under his car and Benny's truck.

But Dean _hates_ sitting around idly while there are things to be taken apart and fixed. There's always something to fix.

"Got nothing better to do," he grumbles with a note of resentment. He's having one of many impatient-with-everything days. He sweeps the dismantled music player into a small pastry tin and secures the lid with a snap. Benny’s standing close to him and he doesn’t sweat but the heat does interesting things to his already unique scent. It makes Dean’s mouth dry.

"Or," Dean adds suddenly, just as Benny starts to walk away, leaving Dean aching for contact, "We could forget about the groceries and stay in," he waggles his eyebrow and Benny raises his in return.

"You tryin' to seduce me?" Benny asks.

Dean shrugs. Sometimes, the moodiness folds into horniness, a pinwheel of emotional turbulence and he can’t exactly control the winds.

“What kind of monster would I be if I let you starve?” He’s joking, of course, but the word always sounds like a disparagement in Benny’s smooth accent.

"If you wanna go shopping, go,” Dean says. It's snippier than he means to but about as much as he feels. He averts his eyes from Benny, but something in Benny's scent has changed.

“Dean…” Benny says like a sigh, low and inviting, “C’mere.”

He practically jumps out of his seat to follow Benny to the short, narrow hallway that leads to the tiny bedroom. Chuckling triumphantly, Dean leans back into the wall, dragging Benny by the collar of his shirt to kiss him full and wet on the mouth, forgoing the chaste foreplay kissing altogether in pursuit of something far more heated.

Benny cups the sides of Dean's face, his callouses hard and cold on Dean’s skin, and opens his mouth to slide his tongue against Dean's. The cloying three-tiered scent of pregnant, horny omega impossible to ignore and Benny’s cock fills almost instantly, throbbing in his pants when Dean spreads his legs and makes a space for Benny to rut against him. Dean's feels Benny’s free hand fit against hi hip under his shirt, stablizing them both as they push their hips together.

"Bed?" Benny asks.

Dean nods and kisses Benny again.

He isn't even certain if he wants sex, or if he wants to be held. Either way, Benny seems to read his mind and does both, cradling Dean naked on his side and sliding into the open hole between his legs easily. They groan in unison at the nearly frictionless glide, the stretched-wide and too-tight feeling perfect and never enough all the same. Dean lies perfectly still and relishes the moment of fullness, of safety.

He barely makes a sound but some small, wet gasps while Benny rolls his hips and kisses the back of his neck. In no time, Dean's orgasm flutters through him, from his toes to somewhere in his chest, and Benny's cock spills in several hot, staccato gushes, filling the spaces in Dean's body that still cry for more, for him to keep going.

But Benny pulls out. His cock doesn't catch on Dean's entrance. They don't stay connected through multiple orgasms.

Instead he wraps his arms around Dean's chest and rolls him over, draws him into the soft wall of his body. Their legs tangle atop the sheets, Dean’s rounded belly rubbing against the hair on Benny’s.

"This is nice," Dean says out loud, startled by how true it feels, “Thanks.”

Benny’s quiet and scritches the top of Dean’s head with his fingertips, dragging his hand down to Dean’s nape and smiles fondly.

“We still need food. You eat like a horse, you know.”

-

Sam looks like hell, and that fucks Dean up more than anything. His hair is still long, because God forbid he ever cut it to a respectable length, but it’s choppy like he just doesn't give a shit how he trims it anymore, and it’s greasy as hell. He’s unshaven. He’s greying, both his face and his hair. He’s bony. He looks exhausted, gravity pulling down his shoulders, eyes bloodshot and purpled skin surrounding them.

But it’s only a dream, one that Dean keeps quiet but can’t shake long into the week.

It’s been almost a month, the angel warding sign on the far wall brown and crusted, but still holding up. His car is in storage for now, which was hard to do, especially since Dean has some kind of superstitious attachment to the Impala. He shoved his smashed up cell down a sewer grate back in Oklahoma. Sam could very well be dead, or worse, and Dean doesn’t know it. Cas could be just a shadow of ash on some abandoned stretch of pavement. The world could be on rails, chugging on to yet another Armageddon. And he’s busy playing some kind of house with a vampire that he resurrected not even a whole year ago.

In his dream, Sam’s not-so-subtly hiding a machete behind his back. _I went everywhere — Cas looked everywhere. I even went back to Lisa’s and she called the police on me_ , he rants, looking sicker by the second. His clothes hang off him like rot, wrist skinny as he shakes the machete at Dean’s stomach, _That’s not even his kid, I don’t know if you’re just doing your usual thing and not thinking about others, or just not thinking at all. He’s a vampire, Dean, for Christ’s sake._

Dean feels like there’s a hand reaching down his throat to pull out the words that Sam wants to hear, choking him, scraping the inside of his throat raw from trying to keep them down. In that moment, when he thinks he’s just about got it, his consciousness separates him from his dream self, and he’s watching through a third set of eyes, keen eyes.

He looks at his hands. Thick, stubby fingers. Cold, calloused.

 _I’m sorry, I’m sorry, it was a mistake_ , the dream Dean says, a torrential, vicious apology. Salt water laps at their feet as dream Sam lifts the machete a bit higher. His fingers are like twigs around the handle.

Dean wakes up softly, naked and shucked of all covers. He can feel Benny breathing undisturbed at his back, cool on his spine, and has that sinking, sulfurous feeling of having failed someone who, in spite of everything, in spite of every fibre in his body twinging with pain and turmoil, he loves too dearly for words.

Benny’s eyes are already open by the time Dean rolls over in their small bed, arms already sliding around Dean’s sides and flattening against his back. Over Benny’s broad shoulder, there’s a seagull mooning Dean from the window, a squat silhouette against deep blue canvas that catches his eye and reminds him that sometimes, funny things do happen, and that there's no way to predict them.

He taps Benny’s chest with two fingers, mimicking a heartbeat.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just like Purgatory, Benny looks to Dean for direction, for a go-ahead, for a decision.
> 
> Decisions are terrifying.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Unbeta'd, so hopefully I'm not losing my grip on this too much. Making it all up along the way, playing fast and loose with season 8 canon. This chapter is a bit longer but I didn't see a good enough reason to split it into two parts.

One morning rises hot, sticky, and golden. Still-new summer adheres to Benny’s bare skin, the heat captured in hidden places and stealing away some of his neutral coolness. He doesn't seem to mind it, doesn't seem to mind much.

Dean, on the other hand, truly feels like he’s breathing in warm syrup. He lays naked on his side with his arms splayed out, searching, one arm hanging off the edge of the bed, dangling, wrist aching, the other melted over Benny’s chest. Sweat clutches to every inch and fold of him, and with Benny’s cool body, his go-to relief from night sweats, now taken from him, Dean feels like a land-trapped octopus.

“It’s like a fuckin’ volcano in here,” he croaks and nearly gags on the thick, gluey taste in his mouth. The pungent smell of them cooking in the small cabin makes his thoughts fuzzy and slow.

“Maybe it’s time to head upriver,” Benny replies.

Dean stretches and yawns, long and loud and tugging at his muscles in a way that’s just this side of oh-so good. He rolls over onto his back and stares at the dirty ceiling through the molten beam of sunlight shining through the porthole.

His throat hurts from vomiting in the early hours. Both knees ache from kneeling on the floor. The skin under his _eyes_ feels sweaty, eyelids fat with fatigue. Below all that, he can feel the vibrant sting of sunburn on his cheeks and shoulders and chest, and then Benny’s fingertips walking up the line of his sternum to draw him back to the conversation at hand.

“What do you think of that, boss?”

Benny might seem comfortable enough in the heat, but he’s not complacent. Dean also knows that _he’s_ the one who sort of dropped himself and his problems on Benny and forced him to remain in one place longer than he’d have liked to. But just like Purgatory, Benny looks to Dean for direction, for a go-ahead, for a decision.

Dean’s not so sure he deserves that kind of esteem from Benny since he’s so unable to make decisions now. Decisions are terrifying. Decisions create momentum and momentum is chaotic when it’s not controlled. So he’s muddling, but muddling for too long is also dangerous. Muddling is going to get them both — all three of them, Dean reminds himself with a curl of anxiety — killed, be it the heat, another hunter catching a whiff of Benny, or any number of the accumulated shadows and threats between them.

Instead of saying any of these things like he knows he should, like he wants to because if there’s one person on earth who might understand the feeling of constantly being on the verge of calamity, of his own disastrous undoing, it’s the slowly starving vampire, Dean just says “Mmm,” as his eyes fall to the swirls of hair on Benny’s chest, unfocused. Is there a timer in there ticking down to the next inevitable ruin, he wonders, is there one in everybody?

“Think about it?” Benny urges softly.

“Sure.”

—

It turns out to be a cloudier day, thankfully. While it's only Dean who truly despises the heat, they both despise the sun. Dean picked up some aloe vera lotion at the drugstore the other day but the smell makes him nauseous. He’s decided instead to never go shirtless in direct sunlight again even if he starts to look like a basement dweller and the the lack of vitamin D eventually kills him. The sun is evil.

He’s sitting on a cheap folding lawn chair he picked up at a yard sale for two bucks with his pants rolled to his calves, ankles crossed. They both agreed with the radio that it’s going to storm later in the afternoon, so Dean watches Benny clean up the deck, drinking in the way his muscles strain and work as he wraps his hands around thick ropes, ties knots, covers things with tarps, scrapes pelican shit off windows and walls.

It looks so natural for him, his movements fluid and practiced the way Dean’s are when he’s replacing the radiator hose or muffler on the Impala, skilled, thorough, almost loving. Easy and soft. This is how Benny deserves to be, the thought coming on Dean like sunlight through clouds. After Purgatory, this is what Benny has earned. 

“Y’all right, there?” Benny notices Dean staring.

“Just admiring the view.”

Benny tips his hat in mock courtesy and goes back to spooling a long rope that’s puddled on the deck. His blunt fingers work fast and graceful, skin darkening from friction.

“You sure you don’t need help with anything?” Dean asks for the fourth time. He plucks at the hem of his grey shirt — Benny’s shirt, which are in general larger and looser — sweat prickling his chest.

“I got it. Doctor says you should just sit there and look pretty, remember?” Benny reminds him. He chuckles at the way Dean scowls and says _she didn’t say that_.

It’s a short-lived annoyance, and replaced by a sudden flash of pain that's rooted deep inside him, bright and visceral, close to his spine or somewhere below his lungs. A hand goes instinctively to his stomach. The other reaches out for something, flailing and blind.

Benny stills and drops the rope with a hard thump. Dean watches it unwind on the deck like a snake, expanding with life.

There’s a ringing in his ears and someone’s holding his forearm, a thumb over the thin bones of his wrist and he wrenches it away, painfully so, “I’m all right, fucking hell, I’m fucking  _fine_ ,” he shouts, but his voice limps from him, wounded and scared.

His free hand finds his cheek and he feels along the line of his jaw. It’s fucking whole, everything is fucking whole and in place. Under the hand that still hasn’t budged from his stomach, he feels a soft movement, and then a tiny pressure right against the centre of his palm.

And with that realization, shame and wonder flood his insides in equal parts.

“Dean?”

Benny stands at a short distance, with his hands raised and worried frozen into every single line of his face. He smells desperate to go to Dean, beta instinct taking over and urging him to _protect_ the panicked, untethered omega. Over them, a slow rumble of thunder.

“Uh-huh,” Dean says, voice empty, unsure of what to feel yet. A new layer of cold sweat soaks through his shirt and his arms start to shake, “Kid’s just beating the shit out of my spleen or something,” he says, and a frail smile comes to him. In spite of what just happened to him, it’s not entirely forced. His thumb brushes over his belly button again as he tries to coax his baby to reach out to him again.

Benny’s not so satisfied. His mouth is turned down into a small frown, “I'm sorry.”

Dean shoots him a tired glare. “For what?”

“Right there, I didn’t mean to—” Benny starts, but Dean stops him before he can finish.

“I’m _fine_ ,” Dean says, louder than necessary, "You didn't do anything wrong."

Benny says _okay_  after a long pause and eventually goes back to his business, sparing a careful glance at Dean whenever possible until Dean can no longer stand it, can’t bear being treated like he’ll be damaged by a wrong word or a wrong touch. So he goes inside.

It’s far too late for anybody to treat Dean like that, and if Benny does it, then all he’s doing is attempting to salvage a bunch of pieces that don’t quite fit together anymore.

—

Benny seems to hear the car through the rain before Dean’s burner phone blips merrily because he barrels into the room while Dean's pulling a clean shirt over his stomach. It’s one of his own, so it doesn’t go easy over his bump but she’s gonna figure it out in about fifteen seconds anyway.

He starts rambling out apologies to Benny, whose nostrils flare as he scents the visitor before she starts pounding on the metal door. Dean squeezes past him. 

Charlie — as it turns out — doesn’t need spells or divine intervention to track down a runaway omega.

“Before you freak out, Sam doesn’t know I’m here,” she jabbers, water dripping from her narrow face. The stink of rain masks all other smells and Charlie is on rails, staring at Dean's face and taking in nothing else, “Not that he didn’t ask me if I could track you down. I told him your trail went cold and ended somewhere in Montana.”

Dean’s mind pedals faster to keep up with her.

“He bought it?”

“Don’t think so,” Charlie shakes her head, hair sticking to her cheeks that she peels off right away, “So, I laid a few false leads for him that would put you in South Dakota, Illinois, Alaska, and — oh, right — Nevada. All at the same time. He'll have fun.”

Dean’s stunned, in awe, that Charlie's done all this, “Viva Las Vegas.”

“Yeah, viva all the way into the sunset. I figured, if you bailed on Sam and the trials thingy you two were working on, then you probably have a flippin’ good reason,” she says, and her eyes suddenly pop as she looks down to Dean’s stomach, noticing it for the first time the way it protrudes from his waist, “Holy shit, dude!”

Benny, quiet the entire time, creeps into the room and is at Dean’s side, taking in for the first time the neon tornado that is Charlie Bradbury. She looks up in a daze from Dean’s round belly to Benny's stony expression, no doubt adding it all up in her head.

“It’s not…the baby isn’t his,” Dean supplies for her.

“Uh…huh,” Charlie squints, nose wrinkling in thought, “I’m gonna guess there’s a hell of a lot more to this than your brother told me.”

Dean laughs bitterly, chooses not to pursue that right now but files it away for later rumination. The longer he’s away from Kansas and Sam and everything, the murkier it all seems, the more he doubts himself. Even as it punctures his thoughts both while he’s awake and while he’s asleep, he isn’t certain that what he experienced was even as he remembers it.

Dean points his thumb at Benny, “This is Benny. Benny, Charlie. She’s friendly.”

“Oh, wait. _Wait_ ,” It dawns on Charlie, “You’re — He’s — ohh, duh!” She reaches out to shake Benny’s hand, finally, who takes it as he casts Dean a tentative, sideways grin, bewildered but amused. 

“Dean mentioned you, texted it, actually,” she gestures typing on a phone as though she’s speaking to an alien or a time traveller or a grandparent, “Vampire, right? That’s…that’s cool. It’s cool with me, I mean. The coolest,” she starts to nod and doesn't stop nodding, an anxious smile pinned to her face.

Dean clears his throat, “ _Charlie_.”

“Yeah. I’m good,” she says, “Still getting used to this ‘all monsters are real’ thing even though I, like, made out with a fairy a few months ago. I mean, it’s one thing to read about it, another thing to see it all in the, uh, flesh. By the way, there’s a certain series of trashy novels I found online that we need to talk about…”

“Fuck me,” Dean moans in horror.

Charlie gives him a strange smile, twisted and sympathetic, “So, shall we?” she says, hand out to Dean in invitation, and then says to Benny, “I’m borrowing him for a few hours. There’s a cute looking tea shop back in town I want to visit and before you whine at me, the sign said they had fresh-baked pie.”

Strangely, the idea of talking to someone about Chuck’s miserable books actually relieves him, motivates him. Those memories at least are clearer for being fixed in writing, a story told by someone else. Clear-cut, solid, immutable. What happened is all right there, a history inked into paper. He can at least feel sure about some parts of himself. 

He wonders vaguely, as he folds himself into the tiny passenger seat of Charlie’s admittedly cheerful car and shuts the rain out, what Chuck’s readers thought of Dean then, what they would think of him now, of his decisions, of his words, his actions, and his inactions. Too mean? Too sad? Too dramatic? Too Ungrateful?

 _Fuck them_ , he thinks to himself, an odd surge of all-possessing anger,  _fuck them all_.

—

Charlie’s free, unasked-for advice: stay mobile.

Dean shares with her not that much, at least not much she hasn't already heard from Sam. _Was stupid, got pregnant._  Then a gap. _Met grandpa, killed a super-demon, watched grandpa die. Th_ _at sucked ass, but what can you do? Sam started the trials, he killed a hellhound_. Then another gap — longer this time. _Drove fast, ended up here with Benny, saw a doctor, I hate the fuckin' heat and the smell of pelicans is getting to me_.

The steam from her drink curls between them and smells nice, cozy, like what he imagines home, a _real_ home, would smell like. But Dean can’t bring himself to drink it so he has a water instead, “Sam will find you," she says simply, "If he doesn’t, then Cas will.”

He doesn’t bother asking how she knows so damn much about Cas. She read the books.

“Cas is busy with other things,” Dean says. There’s no real point to stating that, since Charlie’s point about Sam stands regardless. But as he says it he feels a bitter emptiness in his gut, someplace that used to feel warm. He chugs the rest of his water and sucks on an ice cube.

“Are you just waiting for Sam to come to you, then?”

 _It would be a first_ , Dean bites down on his tongue.

“If he hates Benny as much as you say he does, then what’s gonna happen with that?”

Dean regrets drinking down his water that fast, now, because it freezes in his gut, “I didn’t…” he hadn’t even thought about that, of all the goddamned things. Of course, he’d imagined — and dreamt about — a confrontation between himself and Sam. Benny was there, a primary factor in the arguments, but never an active piece of it.

But how far _would_ Sam go in the name of protecting his weak, needy, pregnant omega brother? Of all the ways that indecision could hurt them — hunters, angels, alphas returning from the ether to claim what's not rightfully theirs — Dean never thought about the things that would seek to hurt Benny and Benny alone. Sam's grudge against the vampire never manifested in his nightmares in a way that would actually end with Benny's head rolling on the floor, blood dark and seeping a stain into the deck of the boat he cares so damn much about, but now that Charlie's brought it up he can't believe he'd been so fucking _selfish_ to not think about it before. 

When Charlie leaves, he hugs her and kisses her cheek, her own beta smell kicked into protective overdrive, kind of like Benny’s, mingled with the tea shop's. He catalogues it, and thanks her for all that she's done and she says  _I love you_. Dean's heart stutters in his chest because he loves her back, but even with nobody there but Charlie to hear him, nobody to be the judge of his own goddamned feelings but himself, he can't say it back and he replies instead with  _I know_. She seems to understand him anyhow. 

Later, Dean crawls into their bed. The left-behind smell of rain lingers everywhere, cold and sticky. He noses at Benny's neck and inhales his scent, the smell of safety, and kisses the night-cooled skin along Benny's throat. Benny hums pleasantly and Dean feels it at his lips, the words that have been stuck in his throat since his evening out with Charlie. He knows he's loud, rude, and obnoxious at times, using words as weapons or a shield when he's at his most vulnerable. His voice is his last line of defense, the truth is his final resort.

And then it happens sometimes that even the truth is not enough.

So he tells Benny, _let's go upriver_. When Benny asks what drew Dean to that decision he shrugs against him, a pile of truths molding against one another and it comes out with no meaning and all meanings all in one, _we'll be better off_.  _  
_

Benny seems to understand him anyhow.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean’s compounding in Benny the one thing that he makes such an effort to suppress: instinct.
> 
> He’s fucking Benny up just by _existing_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Detailed warnings for this chapter:** References to past heats (dub-con), threats of rape, unsexy sex dreams, possible suicide attempt. This chapter is mean. 
> 
> And this chapter feels like a mess because it kind of is, given the POV it's told from. Still, it was tough to write and whenever I finish this I'll come back and revisit this chapter and give it a makeover. Last scene is very inspired by 8.19. Someone asked me about timeline so for the sake of clarity, Dean got knocked up sometime around beginning/middle of December (around 8.08).

Dean’s first heat happened when he was fourteen and he’s seen alphas everywhere since. They smelled him, jeered at him at school, in bars, on the streets, whistled at him. They slapped and pinched his ass and tugged at his shirt and breathed hot, alcohol-soaked breaths against his face and he would tell them to fuck off. If he was with Dad, it usually worked. If he was alone, he’d stagger home with a black eye or a bleeding nose or a scratched face, and Dad would say _be glad you didn’t get it worse_.

So they _only_ beat the shit out of him, but Dean wasn’t ever glad of it.

When he went into heat, however, he wanted them as much as they seemed to want him. He’d fuck the very same alpha truckers who’d threatened to knot him dry and screaming and bleeding. He’d ride them hard in the front seat of their rigs, not screaming but moaning because it felt so fucking good, like they fucking _belonged_ in him. And then they’d tell him, high and half in love with him, _Let me be your alpha, baby. You need me, don’t you? You want a family, right? You want to be mine, don’t you, bitch?_

He’d share a joint with them while he waited for their knots to go down. Then he’d clean himself up, pull up his pants and leave.

The same speech over and over from so many alphas and he hated it because a small delirious part of him would crave it, fucking omega instinct or something.

But he showered away their touch and their stench while he reminded himself that this wasn't him. That wasn’t who Dean Winchester was. That wouldn't be Dean Winchester, ever.

—

May trails off and Dean and Benny head up the Mississippi. Dean's sunburn fades and leaves him tan and freckled and his stomach grows so much his toes disappear. Stretch marks rake across his lower back, the lotion he uses to keep the itching and scarring at bay feels like a waste of money.

The slick summer heat persists up the river, but they find shade and solace in the bends and curves of the land. They also find a biblical number of insects that plague Dean and only Dean at night-time. They hum a strange, droning lullaby joined by the crickets and frogs on the banks, all a swampy undertow to the low melodies Benny croons while he fishes late into the evening. Dean notices how Benny loves being on the river more than the coast, perhaps more at home here than anywhere.

Dean listens to him through the window and eventually falls asleep, face planted in their sheets.

In the morning, Dean wakes up with his face planted on Benny instead, head resting in the meat of his shoulder, inhaling the oddly not-rank smell of Benny’s armpit. Without thinking, he turns his face into it, breathes deeper and kisses the bend of Benny’s arm. The vampire jolts to life.

Dean smirks, “Huh. Didn’t know vampires could be ticklish.”

“And I know you are, too. So don’t even think about it.”

Laughing, he simply inhales again, this time behind Benny’s ear. His smell go deeper, paints more intricate shapes than before. _Vampire_ and beta no longer sum it up, and Dean gets lost in it trying to decipher what’s changed.

Benny just laughs some more, calls him a strange goose, and rolls out the other side of their bed. His hand remains on Dean’s stomach, tethered, until he moves around Dean and out the door.

Dean watches after Benny with the invisible weight of his palm lingering on the hump of his belly.

—

Back in Louisiana, the doctor he had been seeing gave him some pamphlets on beta imprinting which he ignored because it sounded like a load of shit, but now he has to dig them out. As he scans the pastel coloured info blurbs about unmated or abandoned omegas and their effect on betas, his heart starts to beat a little faster, his throat constricts with things that he wants to embrace and deny at the same time.

He’s compounding in Benny the one thing that he makes such an effort to suppress: instinct.

He’s fucking Benny up just by _existing_.

When he creeps out onto the deck, he catches Benny looking out at the misty distance. There’s weariness in his shoulders, his back, aching tiredness. If Dean could see his face, he’d know the dark circles around Benny's eyes weren’t from lack of sleep, the yawning growl of his stomach isn’t simple hunger. Dean knows that feeling, knows that thirst and he also knows it's past gnawing, past nauseous.

Benny is suffering and now, if these pamphlets have got it right, Dean’s just making it worse. Every touch between them is filtered through hormones, and the conscious decision to remain here with Benny turns nearer and nearer to physical need for the both of them.

Dean’s body is calling out for someone to take him in and keep him, and Benny’s is replying.

They’re not made for each other, though. There’s flaws and faults in what they are. At any moment, a touch can feel dangerous and Dean drops into a place where he can’t see or hear or comprehend and Benny has no choice but to take his hands off Dean. And if he catches _Benny_ in a bad moment, kisses him too deep or bares his throat at the wrong moment, hears him growl in the back of Benny’s throat, his aura shifts from safe to unsafe and Benny tells him to back off, now.

Even then, even when they’re hurting each other and bringing out the messes that they’re both trying to control, they still breathe that instinct, the call to each other.

As little as Dean deserves it for all he brings with him and all that he brings out in Benny, Benny is always there.

—

Blood draws a river down his forehead and stings his eyes, terror vibrating through his cells wrapped in a growing urgency to give in, let it go, for the sake of your family, Dean, let it fucking go.

 _Don't be so fucking selfish_.

_It’s only a beating. You’ve survived beatings before. Be grateful it's not worse._

Cas turns on him and for a moment Dean sees the same face Cas makes when he comes, serene surprise, a tightening between his eyebrows and Dean almost expects his lips to say his name, so Dean extends his arm with his shaking fingers and says _We’re family. We need you. I need you_.

When he wakes up, his eyes are heavy and and his throat is parched so he staggers out of bed and grabs a bottle of water from the fridge. He notes how few blood bags are left while he takes small sips of water and swirls it around his teeth.

After Purgatory, after that whole goddamn confusing mess, he isn't sure how to sort through his dreams. He still feels a hand tight around his wrist, still tastes the blood fresh and hot and salty in his mouth, still feels the urgency to flee but the inability to do so, but he’s been tricked before.

He goes back to bed and Benny doesn’t stir, even though Dean knows he’s probably awake. He leans back against Benny’s chest and falls to sleep almost too easily.

This time, when he dreams it’s hazy, red, hot, warm hands over his eyes, chasing away the cold nightmare still lingering. He feels soggy, like blankets are piled atop him, and he feels movement inside him like he does most days now, and movement around him that ignites his skin with pleasure. He’s being held down, but for some reason it’s fine. Indistinct hands hold him by his hips, spreading his legs further and further apart until Dean is sure he’ll break in two but it never hurts, he never says _stop_ because the pleasure only reaches new peaks and keeps climbing. He shudders long and constant around a pillar of heat filling him up, filling him wide.

He wakes up with a soft whine and his hand in his underwear, his hole is wet and pulsing with desire against Benny’s half-hard cock. A confused voice whispers his name but Dean ignores it and launches out of bed, heads outside and throws up in the river.

He’s angry, mostly at himself. It isn’t just the physical hollowness in him that he feels compelled to fill because his stupid biology is fucking with him; it’s the emotional one, now, the unfulfilled triad between himself and his baby and the alpha who impregnated him.

He wants a goddamn mate, he wants a fucking family, he wants to belong to someone.

His skin itches for a mark, but he knows Benny won’t give him one. In spite of everything that happened, everything from when he was a teenager till now, everything he ran away from and everything that’s still happening whenever he closes his eyes, he wants an alpha.

—

Benny is out for supplies — food and water and bigger clothes for Dean and likely nothing for himself — when Dean takes a coarse scrubbing brush and a bucket of water and dish soap to the wall covered in his months-old finger-painting. The soap takes the blood off easily, smearing brown over white, the lines that had been keeping him safe for months erased in no time. The water in the bucket turns brown, everything smells like lemons.

Dean mouths Castiel's name to himself and then says it a bit louder, a question.

He turns around, walks through the entire houseboat, searching, looking behind doors and even in the tiny bathroom. Nothing.

Back at the wall, he feels a crushing loneliness, a familiar chasm re-opening inside him that he doesn't want to feel, but the longing has been a part of him for so long that resisting it just seems pointless and he’s running out of time. He can’t stay here with Benny forever, not with all that’s happening between them. Nightmares be damned. He’s dealt with nightmares before.

The responsible thing to do, Dean rationalizes, is to find his alpha.

"Hello, Dean."

Dean whips around so fast he hears his neck crack.

"I'm sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you," It’s not Castiel. It's a woman with reddish-brown hair in a bun, a slate coloured pantsuit and an air of ethereal superiority that marks her as an angel. A stiff benevolent smile gives her remarkably round cheeks for such a thin face, "My name is Naomi."

Dean inclines his chin and swallows hard.

"I see you've heard of me."

"Just your name. And what you did to Cas after he got out of Purgatory," Dean says tightly, but more than anything he wants to yell at her — _what did you do to him? How did you do it?_ — but he'd rather not piss off an angel with his only weapon a sponge and a bucket of dirty water.  

Naomi looks at him and it’s weird how she doesn’t scent the air like everybody else, like going unnoticed entirely, and says, "I admit, Castiel was working with — for — me to restore heaven. We wanted the same things. Peace for heaven, safety for earth and humankind," she says, "But..."

 _He screwed you over, too_. Dean’s brain is locking up in an effort to keep all the memories and dreams at bay. Maybe it’s just his imagination but the more he strains his senses to hear, see, feel the present, the less there is to actually connect with. The air is still, dead. No wind, no water lapping at the sides of the boat, no rustling of the trees. The clean artificial lemon is gone, and all Dean can smell is iron. 

Slipping into it, his head starts to pound and Naomi is saying something about Castiel again, about how she only told him to get the tablet at any cost, nothing more, nothing about Dean, but her voice just sounds like ice clacking around the bottom of a glass, cold and empty, more lies — _it’s all lies_ , it has to be. 

As usual, Dean doesn’t know where that puts him.

“Just — Just shut up, fucking shut up,” Dean manages to say. The wall is at his back, he can feel it but he doesn’t know how or when it got there. His head seems to vibrate, a static-heavy feedback loop of  _shut up, shut up, shut up—_

Naomi’s expression turns almost compassionate and Dean hears screaming in his mind _it’s not real, it’s not real, she’s lying to you, it’s not real, it’s not_ —

"This loyalty you have for Castiel, this constant, obliterating faith that things will right themselves — it’s what drove you to reveal yourself to angels again, isn’t it? You had hoped to draw him back to you, didn't you?” Her voice is weighted with pity.

Dean tries to say _fuck you_ but he doesn’t even know if Naomi is there anymore: the walls around him are light, bland, and it smells like clean air and concrete. His legs are shaking and his wrist throbs, his shoulder bright with pain, like its dislocated. His jaw is broken, blood snaking down his neck and soaking into his shirt and his voice comes out a pathetic, garbled plea.

He sees Cas, a blank look on his face and a silver sword in his hand, and behind him he sees a room littered with bodies, strewn like dead flies in an attic. They all wear the same jacket, the same shirt, the same hollowed expression.

_It's not real, it's not real, it's not real. Naomi is lying, she's lying._

She has to leave, Dean has to make her go away. Find a way to bleed, to make this all stop.

_Dean, listen to me, it's not real._

He feels cold fingers on his forehead, and he only catches a glimpse of genuine sadness on Naomi’s face before she vanishes in a whirlwind of wingbeats and his knees hit the floor, spilling dirty water everywhere.

As soon as Dean's sure Naomi's gone, the last echoes of her wings nothing but a phantom of a noise, he goes for the kitchen knives and slashes open his left arm, covers the wall in new sigils, as many as he can remember, top to bottom, until the voice in his head fades to a muffle, another memory. Fingers clumsy, shaking, blood dripping down the walls and puddles on the floor. The stench overpowering enough to make him sick.

Dean ties a rag from wrist to elbow, leans his right hand into the wound to stop the bleeding and slides down the cold door of the fridge, stares at the red mess, his vomit drying on the floor, the grey sky out the round window, breathing hard and blinking in and out of reality until Benny finds him, fangs out and snarling like an animal, almost two hours later.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Benny stayed outside with the fresh air that night and so Dean lay in bed alone with his arms around Benny's pillow, breathing in the smell of him. Wide awake, numb, and too afraid to fall asleep and see the room full of dead bodies again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No extra warnings for this chapter (yaaaay).
> 
> I'm not sure when I'll get a new chapter up since I have a Dean/Benny minibang to work out hopefully before the end of May. Hopefully this chapter leaves things happier than the last.

They call his fake name, his new fake name, and once again he forgets what he told the nurse and remains sitting for a few more minutes looking at parenting magazines. A two page spread about different types of cribs, of which Dean knows zip about. Advertisements for diapers and wipes, a soft smiling model baby and their model parent with lukewarm eyes and perfect skin. They look fake as hell, but even their fake happiness coils jealously inside Dean like a loaded spring. 

The receptionist calls him again, practically screeches it and that’s when Dean realizes he’s up.

He heaves himself out of the waiting room chair with his good arm, the other tucked against his side and wrapped in an inch-thick layer of gauze bandaging. It was a bitch trying to stitch himself up, especially without alcohol to dull the wicked pain, but it was better than asking Benny to do it for him.

No matter how many times Dean tried to explain to Benny that he wasn’t fucking attempting to kill himself, Jesus Christ, that he was just redoing the sigils and got carried away and overestimated how much blood he could lose, Benny would simply nod grimly in that way that let Dean know he didn’t buy his story, not one bit.

Dean doesn’t blame him. He doesn’t know what the truth is anymore.

That entire week leading up had been...he’s not quite sure what it was. It wasn’t unfamiliar, that kind of doom and despair has chased him to the edge before. After dad died, after Hell, after losing Sam, after losing Lisa. But when Naomi showed up and he started hearing goddamn voices and started seeing things he'd never seen before, something tore in him, tore _from_ him. He acted without thinking, his body moved on its own while his consciousness stood aside and watched, frayed ends reaching out to try and reconnect, re-establish a current of control.

It was a helpless moment for him, he spiralled away from reality all in a contrary effort to protect himself. And, naturally, he wound up making everything worse again.

After Benny found him and they both managed to calm down, Dean cleaned up, efficient and robotic with a new bucket of water, while Benny kept his distance. He had to.

Every other instinct between them pulled taut enough for it to physically hurt Dean. Not as much as the wound on his arm, but enough that they both spent the rest of the day performing aimless, occupying, separate tasks. Benny untangled a basket of yarn he found tucked away in a corner of his boat, said something about a blanket. Dean played poker games on his phone and texted Charlie as she ranted about the newest episode of _Game of Thrones_ , none the wiser to the tension on the boat.

Benny stayed outside with the fresh air that night and so Dean lay in bed alone with his arms around Benny's pillow, breathing in the smell of him. Wide awake, numb, and too afraid to fall asleep and see the room full of dead bodies again.

—

His new doctor is another woman and she’s meeting Dean for the first time, his new name and his new file completely fresh as though this is his first damn check up in six months. He suffers a small reprimand for waiting this long to see a physician and then she asks, of course, about the bandaging on his arm. He makes up a lie and tells it smoothly. She tells him to be more careful.

Once she checks his blood pressure, heart rate, has him stand in his underwear on a rickety old scale, feels around his belly with clinical hands, and then listens to the baby’s heartbeat, she sits across from him with her legs crossed and readies her clipboard, "All right, Evan, you ready for the quiz?”

Dean likes her. She's smart, swift, and straightforward. Probably a bit unprofessional, but that’s only a plus in Dean’s books. He’d readily flirt with her, casual and meaningless, were this a more agreeable situation, “Hit me with it.”

”Do you drink?"

"Not anymore."

"Smoke?"

"No."

"Do you do any drugs? Judgement free zone."

"Not since high school."

She aggressively checks off a bunch of boxes, tongue between her teeth. Dean thinks he might spy a tongue ring, "Okay, and how's your alpha?"

It’s like being dropped from two storeys up, a feeling which Dean can say he knows for sure, and then suspended inches before you hit the ground. Dean scratches at the trapped skin under the corner of his bandage, barely brushing the edge of his stitches and he says without meeting her face, "Don't got one."

A moment of confusion passes between them, then the doctor laughs awkwardly, "Oh. Sorry, that was _really_ rude of me. I totally misread your scent,” Dean stares at the top of his knee and mutters that it’s okay and she carries on like nothing happened, “There's someone there, though?"

Dean looks up, "What?"

"There's someone there," she wags the end of her pen at him, "You aren't mated, but you are partnered with someone. Good for you."

"Uh. Thanks."

"And how are things between the two of you?"

Dean thinks about the empty bed from the other night, how he deserved it for the way he lost his mind during the few days before. _That’s it, that’s all it was_ , he told Benny the next day, an attempt to apologize. _It’s the stress and the hormones giving me goddamn stupid ideas_. Partially true, if not most of it. Dean wasn’t thinking, or he was thinking too much and he got hurt and then _Benny_ got hurt and it took all that for Dean to realize how ridiculous his entire plan was.

Benny came back to Dean and held him so tightly the air in Dean’s lung froze and the world started to glitch away. In momentary panic, he almost told Benny to get off him, but he swears he felt a wetness on Benny's cheeks when he kissed him, smelled salt and relief and gratitude.

He smelled like home, like comfort, and Dean relaxed in his arms and hushed his worries.

"We're...it's..." Dean hesitates. Things aren't _fine_. Not even close. They live on a damn boat. Benny is a disgraced vampire and Dean's a displaced omega, on the run from heaven and hell and a few things between. Benny is practically _dying_ of thirst, not that he’ll admit it, while Dean feels like he’s only halfway glued to reality most of the time.

Benny is too good to him. Dean owes him apologies, more than apologies, each day.

And, to boot, Dean doesn't know shit about cribs.

Despite all that, he feels safe here, safer. He has space. There’s nobody telling him to move too quickly. There’s nobody telling him to crack himself open and give, give, give.

"I trust him. More than anybody, maybe," Dean says finally. It's not the idealistic response the doctor is looking for, but it's the steadiest answer Dean can offer.

"Hm," she says, "Okay, one more,” her clipboard goes down, having reached the end of the official questionnaire, “Off the record, I’m…concerned about your state of mind,” she raises her hand before Dean can get angry and protest, “I’m not accusing you of anything, but your scent is all over the place. There’s conflict, lots of conflict, and conflict creates stress and stress can hurt the baby  _and_ you,” she addresses Dean’s stomach, strip of skin exposed because his shirt won’t stay down, “If you want, I can refer you to a psychiatrist. But I have a feeling you don’t want that, so I’d like you to find another outlet.”

"An outlet?” Dean tries not to sound too offended, but his cheeks are on fire. Like a shrink could help his fucked up head anyways.

“Not a pillow to scream into or a phonebook to tear in half. Those things are temporary. They’re good if you need an instant relief from stress but for the long term, you should find a real, honest to God outlet,” she says, “I can’t compel you to do anything, Evan. This isn’t a part of your exam. But I’ve worked at omega shelters before. I’ve got the smell of certain types of fear and trauma memorized,” she taps her nose.

“What are you saying?”

The doctor —  M. Reyes, he didn’t even bother learning her name before —  scrutinizes him for a moment with her lips pursed, all the implications right there for Dean to make use of, but that’s not how it is. That’s _not_ who Dean is. He isn't some battered omega, for fuck's sake.

He chews the inside of his cheek and she refuses to talk, so he considers for a ridiculous moment asking how he's supposed to fix himself, how in the fucking world is he supposed to put some sort of meaning to his entire goddamn wretched life? How do you sort out the damage done by things that aren’t even supposed to exist? By ghosts and monsters and demons and angels and forty years in Hell, a year in Purgatory, by scars that mark his soul, by fractures that have whittled away at his willpower to keep on fighting?

Hell, The last two years alone have been such a shit show that the wounds he carries with him are even scaring a _vampire_.

And now he's bringing a baby into this chaos, a new life that knows nothing about monsters or demons or angels but who's going to have to suffer through their dad's leftover disasters and mistakes anyhow.

Just who is he supposed to tell all that, too?

But, instead of going on a rant that would split the nice doctor's world wide open and stuff it up with evil, he contains his eyeroll and says, agreeable as possible because he’s eager to just _leave_ and, yeah, go find a pillow to scream into, "Do you got any ideas?"

—

He pushes the talk about outlets from his mind, unsure if what he’s feeling is anger at himself or humiliation, but what the doctor said about him being partnered, he thinks about that for a long time.

Not that he can tell the difference. Sure, he knows that he and Benny respond to each other on an instinctive level, but Dean is still Dean and Benny is still Benny. They are still separate people. But being _partnered_ , while certainly not the same as being mated, is still important.

Mating, from how Dean understands it, is intense, consuming, annihilating. It destroys a part of a person's independence and freedom, at least from an Dean’s omega perspective. The thought of being mated makes his skin crawl, but he has desired it. Briefly and for extended periods of time, biology plays with him and urges him to find a suitable mate. And with a baby on the way, the urges are even more profound, it’ll be better, he and his baby will be safer if Dean only has a mate.

With Benny, it might even help calm the waters to have a solid something to grasp onto.

A few days pass, the renewed mating itch under his skin intensifies. He dares to bring it up one afternoon, the two of them entwined after loud, hurried, frantic sex that Dean initiated, “So, doctor said something."

“That all she said?” Benny’s beard is damp on Dean’s shoulder.

Dean chuckles, “No, I mean—she said that I smelled…partnered."

“Partnered?”

“Yeah. With you, I guess,” Dean says and rolls over to his other side to face Benny, heaves himself, rather. It’s getting more and more annoying to move at all, "Do I smell like you?"

"Right now you do," he replies with a cheeky smile.

Dean parts his lips and rubs the large curve of his belly absently, Benny’s hand joining his, “Well, I mean, if we’re partnered then I was just wonderin’ if…I don’t know…you want to ever make it official?”

“You askin’ me to marry you?”

Dean flushes deep, “What? Jesus, Benny, I—” _Goddammit_. He’s honestly too pregnant to mind the idea of marrying anybody, let alone one of the few people he feels he can trust completely in this world, but that can wait, might have to wait forever. Right now, though, “I meant—”

Benny shushes him softly, a finger on Dean’s lips, “I know what you meant. And you already know I can’t do that. Not to you.”

Dean speaks past Benny’s fingers, “But if I want you to—”

“I know you do. I can smell how much you want me to,” Benny says and Dean glares at him for reading his scent like that while they’re having a goddamn discussion, “But I don’t want to risk it. I couldn’t live with myself if I hurt you.”

“You never have.”

Benny’s smile doesn’t reach his eyes, “Dean, please. Just accept this.”

He doesn’t want to. Every part of him is screaming to find a way to make Benny do it, beg him, threaten him, start crying, coerce him into it. Anything to get that damn mark on him.

But he already has enough things he’s sorry for. Forcing him to be his mate won’t be one of them.

So, he sinks back into the pillow and looks away from Benny’s face, “Sorry. Sorry I brought it up.”

“Nothing to be sorry about, darlin’,” Benny says softly, hand a solid anchoring weight on Dean’s hip. Dean lowers his eyelashes and curls his legs up, not that they get very far with his stomach in the way, but he follows the need to make himself smaller.

Benny pauses with his hand caressing Dean’s thigh, “What is it you’re afraid of?”

Dean blinks. His head hurts from fighting back tears but he knows that it’s useless. Even without trying, Benny reads him like a fucking book. So he lets them fall.

“I don’t want to end up alone.”

“You _won’t_.”

“Yeah, well, a hunter could show up tomorrow and take your head off just on principle of you being a damn vampire. And then what?”

Benny doesn’t react to that, doesn’t respond to how selfish Dean _knows_ he sounds, “Then you go find Charlie.”

Dean tries to shake his head but only succeeds in burrowing his face into the sheets, “She doesn’t need this.”

"Believe it or not, Dean, the people who care about you want to do everything they can to help you."

Dean makes a derisive sound, “And how much of their help do I _really_ deserve, Benny? Not a lot.”

“All of it,” Benny frowns, like it’s the stupidest question in the world, “Everything you give, it all comes back around, chief. And you’ve given everything.”

—

Charlie sends him a text later that day asking if it’s okay that Sam hears, at the very least, that Dean is alive and safe.

He texts back a slow _yes_.

Sam will give her hell for lying to him, of course, and he still doesn't think it's fair that she’ll get caught up in all the shit between him and his brother, but before he can say sorry Charlie pings back with a little heart icon and smiley face. Benny might have a damn point, even if Dean still doesn't believe he's earned it.

When he hugged Charlie before she left a few weeks ago, he unthinkingly dragged his nose through her hair and smelled — alongside a fruity shampoo that he liked — her acceptance and love and determination. All distinctly familiar smells, beta smells.

A bottle of that same fruity shampoo ended up in a duffel bag she brought him the morning after their tea shop date. It was full of comfort items like squishy memory foam flip-flops for his ever-swelling feet, chocolate bars, candles, a new pillow and a pink iPod filled with a blend of Dean’s favourite songs and Charlie’s favourite songs.

He flipped over a empty coil bound book with thick blank pages, sticky residue from a price sticker on the back. Charlie said she couldn’t find any actual baby books in town so this would have to do.

There was also an assortment of tiny onesies with the Starfleet logo on all of them.

“Oh, man, don’t get all choked up on me,” Charlie said hurriedly. She blinked away tears of her own as Dean crushed her against him again, his heart beating too fast. Sniffling, he croaked his thanks and told her to stay safe and stay the hell away from monsters. She simply told him to stay in touch.

Before she got back in her car to leave Dean for a second time, though, she also said, “Hey, just in case you’re stumped, you already know I think the name Leia is _really_ nice.”

—

He'd shoved Charlie's duffel bag under the bed after taking out the shampoo and the iPod. The rest of it he wouldn't be needing for a couple more months, hopefully.

That realization sticks when he drags the bag out again, weeks later. It had surfaced earlier during his check up when he got to listen to the baby's heartbeat, the tiny patter signalling that there's something quite alive in him although he still feels like he’s partially dead on the average day. That sound, though, he thought about the crib he doesn't have, the clothes he hasn't bought, the learning he hasn’t done, the names he hasn't chosen.

Leia _is_ a nice name, he admits.

He finds what he's looking for in the bag, the maybe-baby book. Thoughtful as it was, Dean just isn't sure he's going to be the baby book type. Not yet, at least. Perhaps he will once his baby is actually born, but for now he has a more immediate use for the generic coil-bound book that will still fulfil the thoughtfulness of Charlie’s gesture.

He can't talk to a shrink. That's completely out of the question.

He can't talk to Benny, either. At least not at the moment, not out loud. Whenever he tries to bring up what happened to him that he ended up at Benny's feet skittering in and out of flashbacks, whenever he says "I wanna tell you something" his throat closes up and he steers away from it immediately and kisses the hell out of Benny instead.

Benny’s starting to catch on to that, he thinks. They haven’t had sex since Dean asked him about mating.

Sam is...Sam wouldn't listen even though he says he wants to, even though he urges Dean to open up and talk about his feelings because Sam wants to know only that Dean's getting better, not that he's having panic attacks and nightmares and flashbacks about this one goddamn thing. Sam doesn’t want to hear about how devastated Dean is by his entire pregnancy, how _stupid_ he feels that it happened at all. Sam doesn’t want to hear about how Dean still dreams about Lucifer’s crypt and of losing his baby, and how much that devastates him, too.

Sam wants — _needs_ — Dean to make sense.

Moreover, there's still the issue of Dean's faulty memory, his screwed mind making up things that didn't happen and glossing over things that did, altering parts to suit whatever maladaptive thinking will get him through the next difficult year.

Blushing for some strange reason, he sits outside and opens the book to the first page, runs the tips of his fingers down the paper.

It's unlined, which is a bit of a pain but the more he thinks about, the more he thinks he might like it that way.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There’s a natural, physical pull between them just as there always has been, but the shadow-thing stalks behind Benny’s pupils when Dean looks at him, a shadow pacing back and forth, waiting for its moment.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been a few months but I gotta get back on this horse, somehow. I made a thing for the first five chapters that you can find [here](http://intentioncrafts.tumblr.com/post/123291123968/shake-our-souls-dean-benny-abo-mpreg-canon).
> 
> If there's any errors, they're all mine. I'm keeping track of this thing as best as I can.

“Okay, okay. I’m going.”

The floor lurches beneath Dean’s feet on a windier night that quiets the chirping of the frogs, but in its place is a frail, unbroken hushing sound, the slap of water against the sides of the boat, the occasional gust that tilts everything to the side. He reaches out to steady himself on the wall and tip-toes away from the bed to the tiny adjoining bathroom. Sweat cooling behind his knees and head thick with sleep, Dean moves urgently, speaking in a low whisper as if it’ll calm the deep pressure sitting right atop his bladder.

A chill trickles down his spine as he finally notices a presence two feet behind him, barely detectable for the way it sways silently with the creaking of the boat. Turning his head only enough that Benny stills in his tracks, Dean hisses at him, “Go back to bed; this’ll only take a sec.”

A heavy gust makes everything keel to the left and Dean sees out of the corner of his eye as Benny steps forward with his hand out to help Dean keep his balance, but Dean puts his hand on the wall instead. When the wind dies down and the floor levels out, Dean turns to face Benny and shakes his head, “Seriously, man, I’m fine.”

Benny doesn’t budge. His eyes are oddly narrowed and a dim note of marvel creeps into his voice when he speaks, “Never heard you talk to your baby before,” he says.

The unfinal bend to his words makes Dean pause and frown.

“Not exactly riveting conversation,” he replies, takes two steps backward and clicks the flimsy bathroom door shut in Benny’s face. With a wall between them now and his palms flat against the door, Dean exhales and murmurs loud enough for Benny to hear, “I’m sorry, man. Just some things I wanna keep to myself.”

“Fair enough,” Benny’s muffled reply is clipped by audible hurt.

The sun heats Dean’s back; orange and pink peek through the small porthole window but the wind promises a difficult day ahead and bad weather usually brings with it extra aches and misery, already noticeable in his ankles and hips as he moves carefully around the small bathroom to take a piss. When he finishes, he can still sense Benny waiting on the other side of the door. They’re _partnered_ , so Dean figures this is the sort of thing he should expect. But now that they’re in it, though, and fully involved with what it all means, he can’t imagine what it would be like if they were _actually_ mated. As he stares at his reflection in the mirror, he wonders what it would look like, what it would feel like, if Benny were to bite and claim him like Dean had asked him to. Mating fantasies still plague him, same as they always have, but after the fantasy ends, when the mark heals and leaves a scar, he wonders if he’d get a single moment to himself or if all his time would belong to Benny, and if he would even _care_ , being so wrapped up in the totality of the bond.

Revulsion thickens in his stomach, a slow disgust that grows more and more antithetical the longer he thinks about it.

Of course, there’s still a danger in being unmated, especially with an alpha out there whose claim to Dean is a hell of a lot stronger than any beta’s, even one Dean chooses as his partner. Until he bears a mark, Dean is up for grabs and _that_ threat is more immediate in his mind than voluntarily obliterating his entire sense of self for someone like Benny. Not that Dean thinks Cas would _force_ the mark on him. It’s taboo by human understanding only, but the very idea of it is still unthinkable. After everything they’ve fought for together between Heaven and Hell, the ideals they both nurtured and tested over the years would be utterly meaningless if something like _that_ ever were to happen. But, then again, Castiel has had no problem robbing Dean of a choice if a situation didn’t please him in the past.

Another gale with the worst sense of timing catches the boat and Dean, feet planted firmly on the floor, feels his body fly. His breath catches painfully in his chest and his fingers twitch on the countertop as he closes his eyes and let’s the flashback happen; he walks into the memories purposefully. The cold rattling of a chain-link fence, sharp edges scratching his already battered face, catches him and throws him off again like a trampoline and he falls hard to the ground, every muscle in his body taut with abuse gone slack from the impact. His elbows shake but he props himself up and dribbles blood onto the pavement.

Blinking rapidly, Dean’s eyes flit over his reflection for injuries that aren’t there and his breath comes out in short, panicked puffs. On the other side of the door, Benny’s scent has gone dark with concern.

“Dean?”

“I’m good,” he watches his lips move, but he can’t feel the words leaving him and can only hear a muffled buzzing sound, so he might not be saying what he thinks he’s saying at all. Benny doesn’t respond, or Dean doesn’t hear him through the rushing sound in his ears as he focuses his breaths in long, even strides, feeling oddly grounded and lightheaded at the same time.

Five sluggish minutes later, he swings the door open to find Benny still close by, leaning on the wall and resting his chin on his knuckles with his bottom lip tugged between his teeth. After what just happened, he feels more glad that Benny’s here, he’s glad he’s hovering. He’s also glad they’re partnered and not mated at the moment, but the exact words to breach the feeling still elude him. Something is still not settled between them, and as much as Dean wants to fold his arms around Benny and anchor himself to something permanent, he feels a resistance go up between them that he can’t banish with touch alone.

“I mean it. I’m okay. I’m working on it.”

Benny’s nods slow again.

Dean’s shoulders fall slightly, “You don’t believe me.”

“I think I…,” Benny avoids the question, huffs and licks his lips till they’re shiny in the golden light flooding the through the bathroom window, “It’s just…it’s something, isn’t it. All I wanna do is…” Benny lifts his hand between them, reaching, searching, but Dean can’t reach back because he has to brace himself when another gale rocks the boat. Benny lowers his hand, “I feel foolish thinking about you getting hurt, in whatever way, and me being able to prevent it somehow.”

Dean’s jaw clenches. Not enough for Benny to notice immediately, but enough to make his words come out stiff, “Don’t. Don’t make me your concern,” he says, “What you’re doing now is just fine.”

Watching Dean closely with a neutral expression, Benny nods slowly again.

“Okay?” Dean asks.

“Yeah. Okay, chief.”

As he walks by, Dean claps him on the shoulder and catches an odd slant in Benny’s scent, but it evens out quickly enough when they both settle back in bed, Benny behind Dean, and Dean pulls the vampire’s arms around his middle and falls back asleep to the hollow echoes of water breaking against the boat.

—

It’s been almost two weeks since Naomi’s visit. The cut on Dean’s arm is healing at an unreal pace that the doctor told him is totally normal for an omega as pregnant as he is and for a fuzzy moment in her office he can’t recall why he doesn’t have _more_ scars like the jagged red and white line just below his elbow. A hot wave of anger rolls through him for all the times he’s been injured and can’t recall how or when or _why_. After all, it’s an impressive track record, but who would believe him without some sort of physical evidence?

Dr. Reyes, whom Dean has decided to go back to, purses her lips.

“What?” Dean asks, “What is it? Are you _smelling_ me again?”

“Hard not to,” she replies. Her dark hair is up today and Dean can see the fringes of some kind of colourful tattoo climbing up the back of her neck, “You taking care of things up here?” she taps her temple.

“Yeah,” he squeezes the word out and for a frantic moment he thinks she might ask to _see_ it.

But she doesn’t, just says, “Good,” and then asks him how many hours he sleeps at night, and how much the baby kicks.

His panic fades gradually as he reports the past couple of weeks to her, but he stores the anger and tells it to the thick pages of his journal later that day sitting at the small table he threw up under after Naomi left and makes a bulleted list of all the injuries he can remember living, and sometimes not living, through. The busted leg stands out only because he hobbled around Rufus’ cabin for a couple months learning Spanish and watching soap operas. It was practically a vacation, by hunting standards. Dimly, he remembers being shot in the arm and a quiet beta named Nancy making soothing sounds as she patched him up. Or was that Jo? Either way, that was all before Hell, he’s sure, and as soon as he realizes that, all he can think about is the hellhounds and their claws ripping into him, which he felt for all of ten agonizing seconds before they tore through his spinal cord and he stopped feeling anything.

And Hell. That was something else. Hell was an entire dictionary of wounds and tortures that evades pronunciation. Hell isn’t something diagnose, check off and then move on from. He skips it for now.

After several pages of his journal are filled with his list, a catastrophe of words and and scribbles, slurred, uneven printing smudged from the sweat on his fingers, Dean stares at it and makes a grim face, his fist curling against the top of the pages. He doesn’t tear them out, though. Throwing the pages into the river like he wants to, it would only repeat what’s already been done to him.

And there are things missing from the list, aside from Hell, and he fucking knows it. It makes itself known like a beast blinking red in the dark; the chain link fence, the broken ribs, the blood dripping from his mouth. The cold ground under his hands, bruises and cuts hot with pain.

Dean bites his lip and looks out the window beside him and diverts his memories from the scars and injuries that he’s been allowed to keep and the ones that have been erased. He’s not stupid; he’s a hunter and he easily reads patterns in history. But his rage is being subsumed by something heavier and bleaker. Shame grows inside him like a bad weed, roots clutching deep and persistent. After all, Castiel carried Dean’s wrecked soul out of Hell and poured new life into his rotting corpse, left his first mark, and Dean knew even then he could never repay him for that. He won’t let Dean, he's stopped him at every turn. He wouldn’t let Dean pull him out of Purgatory, and Dean wasn't even allowed to hang onto _that_ guilt because Cas made it clear that he is stronger than Dean, always has been. And he likes to remind him, again and again, that anything Dean tries to do, Cas can put a stop to if he wants to.

It’s grey out now, clouds fat with rain and Dean watches Benny enjoying the moments he has before it hits, his back to Dean as he gazes out on the still water, the shivering trees lining the banks, thinking about fuck knows what vampires think about when they’re too hot, too thirsty, and are hiding pregnant runaways from their very persistent alpha brothers and angels. They haven’t spoken more than twelve words to each other today, a tension burrowing under Dean’s skin that he has no way to get out. He’s tried to reach out to Benny, tried to kiss him or get him into bed but something stronger than Dean is rolling up between them, slowly but inevitably from someplace dark and old. There’s a natural, physical pull between them just as there always has been, but the shadow-thing stalks behind Benny’s pupils when Dean looks at him, a shadow pacing back and forth, waiting for its moment.

Dean’s not afraid of it, but whenever they’re around each other lately, they don’t feel very present.

It’s him. He knows it. He’s cracking something open and it’s old and volatile. His mind is a tomb and over the years he’s shut things into the dark, cold, dusty vault whenever it became too inconvenient to feel it. From the first grief that’s darkened his nightmares from the time he was four years old to the flashes of a bright, concrete room, dead bodies carpeting the floor. He’s always had to put it away for someone else’s sake, and now that he’s dragging it all back out again, it’s putting him back years in his own head and putting space between him and Benny. It’s hurting, and Dean should fix it like he always fixes things, but there’s a difference this time.

It’s Benny himself, of course.

Dean hasn’t told him yet, about Lucifer’s crypt. He vaguely explained how an angel named Naomi came to grill him about Castiel’s whereabouts, but mentioned nothing more, and Benny has only said that he’ll hear Dean if Dean feels like talking. It’s one of the things that Dean likes the best about Benny, the way he’ll mind his own in exchange for the same, but leaves the door open anyhow.

But now, it feels like that door is starting to close.

—

Dean starts to collect old parenting magazines. The clinic he visits won’t miss Fall Edition 2005 of Today’s Baby & Omega, he's sure, so he shoves them in his back pocket, hides them at his thigh as discretely as possible and builds a small mountain back on the table in Benny’s houseboat. By the middle of June, he feels like he has an eternity to go with his pregnancy, each day lasting longer than it should for how sore he is, how many times he wakes up at night, and how often he has to pee, but realistically he knows that he spent more time, _real_ time, in Hell than he has left to prepare for his baby. Aside from the baby clothes Charlie bought for him and two small knitted hats and a blanket from Benny, Dean has nothing to show for it, and the more he examines Benny’s small boat and tries to envision it with a crib tucked in somewhere, the more he realizes that he hasn’t thought this through at all.

The pictures in the magazines show off beautiful nurseries with matching cribs, changing tables, rocking chairs, and storage space. Benny’s boat consists of a kitchen and living area combined in one, a small bedroom, and the bathroom, and it’s cramped enough with just the two of them. What he needs, he realizes, but doesn’t necessarily know if he wants, is the safety of four thick walls, lots of locked doors, and magical barriers to keep things out that might come for him. The bunker had a lot of empty rooms and even before Dean left, before he started taking this all seriously, he could imagine one of them outfitted to house a baby.

But he left that behind in Kansas, so he _should_ have to make do with what he has, and he will. Somehow.

Oddly enough, the same day he’s wandering around the small boat with a tape measure trying to find a decent place to fit a crib, his cell phone goes off, the ringtone cheery and loud on the small dining table. Frowning deeply, Dean approaches it like it’s an armed bomb. Charlie’s a texter. He lets it go to voicemail and listens right after.

“Dean? It’s Kevin. Look, I know you’re probably _extremely_ busy,” Kevin Tran’s deadpan voice comes through the speaker against Dean’s ear, “But you kind of left us in the middle of something and now Sam’s making it some kind of suicide mission and I don’t know what to do. Not my fault, man, but I translated the tablet and the next trial is to walk right into Hell and free a soul. Sam’s gonna do it. Call me back, dude.”

The silence that falls after Kevin’s voice ends rushes in Dean’s ears, and after fifteen seconds he swears out loud and throws a chair to the floor. His hand drags over his face to muffle a frustrated sob. Sam would do something like this, of course he would. It’s exactly the kind of move he’d pull to draw Dean back in, putting Kevin up to calling him with the news to convince him to come back home. Not that Dean blames Kevin for going along with it, since it's their fault the kid got wrapped up in it in the first place, but at the moment he kind of wants to wring his skinny neck.

He finds the call-back icon. Kevin picks up immediately.

"You got all that?"

"Where's Sam?"

“I'm great, thanks for asking," Kevin replies tonelessly, "He’s sleeping."

Dean slides down a wall and sits on the floor, "What about Hell?"

"I didn't mean right at this moment, Jesus. It's actually not as easy as it sounds, but I’m guessing it _is_ doable if it’s on the tablet. Either that, or else Metatron was on something good,” Kevin explains, “Sam said he’s gonna ring up a crossroads demon to get some tips from it the old fashioned way, which probably means he’ll use the demon torture dungeon, right?"

Dean's heart hammers in his chest when he says his next words but it’s just three syllables, and he gets them out, "Put him on."

"I said he’s sleeping.”

“And I said put him on the damn phone, Kevin, or I will drive back to Kansas tonight and smash all your video games with a hammer.”

Kevin laughs caustically, the first gleam of emotion Dean’s heard from him in a couple months, “Jeez, I’m glad I didn’t say ‘I miss you’ or anything else that I’d want to take back,” Kevin replies bitterly, “You’re both huge dicks lately, you know that? Like I get that the only reason I’m still alive is because of you two, but it doesn’t exactly feel worth it if I get treated like a goddamn toilet seat most of the time.”

Dean sighs deeply. _Dammit_ , “Sorry. You’re right. I’m sorry, kid,” he says in a deliberately gentler voice, “Look, we’re a mess right now, I know that. We’re a mess most of the time. You of all people shouldn’t have to deal with our problems on top of everything else. And I shouldn’t’ve left you guys without explaining anything,” Dean rubs his hand over his face again, a sick pull in his stomach that he labels as longing, “I miss you, though. Life isn’t as sarcastic without you around.”

Kevin makes a _hmph_ noise into the receiver, but says, “Sam rants about you leaving all the time but I think I get why you did it, so I just smile and nod.”

“Thanks,” Dean’s frustration melts a bit, “I still don’t know if I did the right thing.”

Kevin’s reply is the voiced equivalent of a shrug, “You ever gonna come back?”

“I don’t know,” Dean’s hand crawls over his belly for some comfort. The baby is active, kicking against his palm a half dozen times a minute and it reassures him that he is making _some_ good choices, “Guess I probably will have to eventually. But, I don’t know…I’m not…” Dean pauses and lets out a long, vibrating breath. He wants to explain that he can’t go back, not yet, not while he’s on the verge of so many things, but already he can feel his resolve crumbling even though Kevin is patiently waiting for him to speak. If Sam is planning on doing something as stupid as breaking into Hell somehow, then Dean needs to be there. If not to stop him, then to be there for Sam afterwards.

_If he makes it out again_.

Dean tries to throw that thought into the vault, but it gets its his claws in him and won’t let go.

“Could you just get Sam to call me sometime? I don’t know how you got this number, but get him to call it.”

“You’re sure? He might trace it.”

“If it keeps him busy and out of Satan’s mosh pit, then fine.”

The line goes quiet and Dean can picture Kevin tapping his long fingers on the table, weighing his options. Sam definitely put him up to this, Dean decides, but if anybody on the planet can see through and call out their bullshit, it’s Kevin, “I meant it, you know. I get why you left, so if you don’t want to…” he says, the conflict evident in his hesitation, “It’s up to you, is what I’m saying. But I guess…I guess we could use you back here,” he says finally, “Sam’s harder to beat at Mario Kart than you are.”


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean hasn’t been able to find a peaceful moment in between worrying about Sam and worrying about Benny. Up at night, sitting out on the deck and working over his options and realizing that he doesn’t have many, and he doesn’t have a lot of time either so the more time spent wasting on worrying, the more likely he’d screw it all up. By the time he stood in front of the mirror brushing his teeth this morning, it seemed fairly clear to Dean that he needed to act now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is about a thousand and a half words longer than I'd have liked but I gave up trying to keep it under 3k because it would have been overall detrimental to the relationship between Dean and Benny, so there. Really, really big thank you to amonitrate for betaing this beast. Her insights brought out some awesome subtleties and inspired some new ones, especially in all the interactions between Dean and Benny later in the chapter.

“It’s…” Dean sucks in a deep breath and rakes a hand through his hair, kind of long around the ears, and it’s fucking soft. Hormones, he thinks and drops his hands and rubs the mound of his stomach, “It’s the baby. I mean, kickoff’s in a couple months and the rate I’m going this kid’s going to be shitting in diner napkins,” he lies right to Benny’s face, but a few days after Kevin called, Dean’s been teetering on the edge of a nervous breakdown waiting for Sam to get on the goddamn phone.

Not his best plan, lying to a goddamn vampire who knows fucking better, but later that afternoon when Dean finds himself in the middle of the baby section at Wal-mart picking through pastel onesies, his baby anxiety _does_ lift above his Sam anxiety. There’s just so much shit to buy, to learn about, and when a trio of omegas corner and quiz him about all sorts of choices he didn’t know he was _supposed_ to have made yet, a ringing starts up in Dean’s ears: How does he plan to deliver? Will he get the epidural? Has he considered home-birth? Has he decided if he’ll breastfeed? Will he use cloth diapers?

The interrogation goes on and on until Dean fakes a phone call, grabbing a handful of outfits on his way. They’ll fit any baby at some point, he figures as he waddles off into an aisle of strollers. The first one he sees looks pretty cool, dark blue with big rubber wheels that would handle the gravel roads around the bunker like a pro, but when he reads the price tag on it, he swears quite loudly. Even for a career credit card scammer, the numbers hurts.

An employee in a red vest hears him cursing, catches his eye and asks what he's having.

Dean places his basket against his protruding stomach and says bluntly, "A baby."

He heads to the check-out after grabbing a few bottles, miserable on his feet that feel like hot swollen tumors attached to his ankles. S _hould’ve worn the flip-flops_ , but exposing his bare skin to the scuffed linoleum that hundreds of people drag dirt over each day grossed him out. Benny offered to make the run, but Dean gleaned that he was hesitant about the idea with so many people in one place, an all-you-can-eat buffet to a hungry vampire, so he told Benny to wait in the parking lot in the truck they borrowed from a mechanic on the outskirts of Vicksburg and listen to the jazz tapes they found in the glove compartment.

“That help?” Benny turns the knob to get the AC going full-blast in the truck.

Dean throws his bags onto the floor in the back and sinks into the worn out seat, groaning indecently. Benny shakes his head, and pulls out of the parking space, and they make the drive out of town in relative quiet. Dean dozes for most of it, but when he blearily spots a Red Cross beside a closed down movie rental, he starts hitting Benny’s shoulder to get him to pull over.

“This ain’t a good idea,” Benny peers into the rear-view mirror once they’re stopped at the side. The truck rumbles noisily with Benny’s foot on the brake.

“Yeah, and starving you to death is just _fantastic_ ,” Dean replies. Benny always looks tired, but lately when Dean wakes out of his nightmares all on his own, he rolls over and Benny looks like he’s _actually_ dead and Dean has to shake him hard to snap him out of it.

“I’ll be ten minutes. Fifteen, tops.”

“Dean…” Benny warns, “If you get caught—”

“Benny, don’t try and stop me. You’re not eating enough and draining birds isn’t working,” he says sternly. If Benny’s draining birds at all. He hasn’t witnessed it himself, nor has he come across any evidence of it.

The vampire curses in a low voice and finally drops the truck in park. Victorious, but troubled, Dean unbuckles himself and kisses Benny’s cold cheek before bouncing out of his seat and into the building.

Ten minutes later, he manages to pinch only three bags and leaves through the front doors a bit lumpier under his shirt than before. They’re cold and slosh around unpleasantly and none of them are the type Benny really likes, but Dean isn’t about to get picky when he’s six months pregnant, his feet are sore as hell, and he’s already on Benny’s bad side about this.

“That’s the last time you’ll be doing that,” Benny says irritably when Dean climbs back into the passenger seat. Benny takes off down the road at a healthy speed, “Shouldn’t have to do that at all.”

Dean kicks his boots into the footwell and finally snaps, “For fuck’s sake, just stop, okay?”

Benny goes silent in the driver’s seat as good as if Dean had slapped him, staring at the road ahead of them in chagrined silence. His sunglasses hide his eyes but Dean can see the downward bend to his mouth, the tension in his wrists from gripping the wheel. But he says nothing else, so Dean rolls his eyes and lets go first.

“Benny.”

“Hm.”

“I’m sorry.”

Benny taps the wheel with his index finger, “Nothin’ to be sorry about,” he replies with forced lightness,

“You’re pissed at me.”

“It ain’t you, brother.”

“Bullshit,” Dean’s says, somewhat frantic in tone, “I know this sucks, man. I don’t like doing it either, but we have two options and option two is you wasting away on me and I _can’t,_ ” he closes his eyes and exhales loudly. This is just what he needs on his pile, “You’re with me, right?”

Benny’s reply arrives a bit too late to mitigate the worry stirred up in Dean’s chest, “As long as you need me, chief.”

—

A bird lands on the hood of the truck and hops over the hot metal surface on twig-like feet and starts pecking at something stuck in the wiper. Dean stares through it, and while the bird looks up, its beady little eyes are oblivious to the boiling thoughts that sear the wall of his skull. His grip tightens on the wheel, teeth sunk into his bottom lip until it hurts.

Someone knocks on his window.

He cranks it down. Humidity floods in.

“One of my patients says there’s some creepy stalker out here in a beat up old truck,” Dr. Reyes pulls her hand out of her coat pocket and checks her phone, “You’re late.”

“Been kind of busy,” Dean forces out. He hasn’t been able to find a peaceful moment in between worrying about Sam and worrying about Benny, and the combined worry for those two is all sitting atop the veritable mountain of worry about Cas and about himself. Dean was up all night, sitting out on the deck and working over his options and realizing that he doesn’t have that many, and he doesn’t have a lot of time, either, so the more he wastes on _worrying_ , the more likely it is he’ll screw it all up.

By the time he stood in front of the mirror brushing his teeth this morning, it seemed fairly apparent to Dean that he needed to act _now_.

“Can you cancel my appointments?”

“Find a prettier doctor?”

“Moving,” Dean replies tightly, “Closer to family.”

“Ah, you sound thrilled,” she replies, “And is this really good for you?”

“Look, Doc, I know you’re just tryin’ to do your job but trust me when I say I’m not worth the hassle,” Dean says, “Nothing is gonna fix what’s going on in here, not for good. I just have to keep muddling through,” he smiles ruefully.

“Honesty looks good on you, Dean, but what about your kid?” She says, her voice sharp and righteous. Dean whips his head around and stares at her like she’s just grown horns but can’t figure out how to respond before she’s talking again, “Worth it or not, I know you’ve got at least one very good reason to keep fighting.”

Some gears are turning faster than others, some not moving at all, “I can’t...I’m not…”

“Take your time.”

“What are you…” Dean sputters, finally locating his senses and, Christ, his three decades of training as his hand scrambles for any kind of weapon in the truck. There’s a half full bottle of water in the cup holder, a box of tissues, a handful of napkins. And thirty-three cents, perfect, “Who the fuck — How d’you know my name?”

Reyes puts her hands up in surrender, “Relax, okay? I’m not a demon.”

“Then you’re an angel,” Dean accuses. He can’t fight, so he turns the key and the truck grunts back to life, the radio hisses quietly, adding to the white noise building up in his head. Dean’s heart batters up against his ribs so hard it hurts, and the heat in the truck is too much and he can’t get a decent breath of air.

His fingers are numb and his foot is like a cinder block on the floor. Super.

A hand is on his shoulder, squeezing.

“Slow down and take a breath, Dean. You can’t drive out of here like this.”

“Sam...” Dean gasps, the only word he can get out.

“If you’re asking if Sam put me up to this, the answer is no,” she replies, “I’m just a doctor who happens to be an ex-hunter, and you are just one very lucky omega to have landed me as you physician. Others would have killed you outright, you know,” she says, and then adds, “other hunters, I mean.”

“You lied to me.”

“Uh, technically, we both lied. Hunters do that.”

Thankfully he can feel his hands again, and the pressure on his lungs starts to lift so he takes a few shallow breaths. Hysteria tickles his mind in place of the dark, sucking panic and he’s able to put on a sneer, "Reyes really your name?"

"Unlike you, I don't have to hide. Never got around to starting an apocalypse myself," she says, "Look, I know a lot of hunters who would love nothing more than for me to put a bullet in your brain for all the shit you brought down on us. Part of the reason I stopped hunting."

Dean _hmph_ s and grimaces when his baby starts kicking so hard he sees it through the taut material of his shirt.

"But you can't stop your appointments, not this close," she says, "And I think it'll turn out best if you have a doctor that knows you, so I’m in it for the long haul."

"What, you wanna come to Kansas with me?" he scoffs.

"Jesus, not _with_ you. I don't want to know what happens on that love boat of yours," she says, her forehead crinkling the way it does whenever she realizes she’s overstepped a professional boundary, “You _are_ going with your partner, right?”

Dean’s stomach turns over uneasily and he chooses silence as the answer to that question.  

A single sculpted eyebrow raises at him, and Reyes says, "Regardless, I can drive out on weekends. You’ll get your check-ups one way or another."

The baby is really taking it out on Dean’s insides, maybe having sensed Dean’s panic attack. Running his thumb over the spot where he saw it kicking, he silently apologizes for being such a headcase, and in the same brainwave realizes the doctor is right; he needs to keep working on this, and he needs help taking care of himself.

“Why’re you doing this?” he asks.

"Really love to make sure all the horse’s teeth are intact huh? Let me put it simply: I like babies, and I like you," she says, "As much shit that’s happened because of you and your brother, I believe all hunters deserve a chance to get out of this life."

The doctor makes her way back to the clinic, coordinates scribbled in pen on her prescription pad. Dean watches her, unsettled by a number of things, but concerning the doctor he’s chiefly wondering if this was the other shoe, or if he should still be waiting for it to drop.

—

Benny puts up no explicit argument when Dean asks if they could turn back and go retrieve his car from storage. Dean says it lightly, sitting on the floor buried in baby clothes, trying to make it sound casual as he removes tags and loose threads from his purchases, but as soon as the words are out and have a second or two to sink in, Benny gets that pall over his face. The same one Dean saw so many times in Purgatory whenever Dean caught a new lead on Cas after every dead-ends.

“What’s that look for?”

“Pardon?”

“You’re looking at me like...I don’t know, you don’t want to do this but you’ll ride anyway.”

Benny pointedly avoids Dean’s stare, “I said yes. Don’t know what else you want me to say,” he swings the front door to the boat experimentally. It shrieks raucously, the bottom hinge brown and rusted and stiff.

While he’s distracted trying to gauge Benny’s demeanor, Dean’s fingers slip on the scissors trying to work out one of those annoying plastic tags and he jabs himself in the thumb, cursing gently. Goddamn tags. There’s too fucking many. A small blob of red wells up and he sucks it off before Benny can see or smell, “I want you to be honest with me, man.”

“Mhm,” Benny hums dispassionately, “You need a band-aid, chief?”

And maybe Dean’s a bit paranoid, but it sounds like Benny just threw down. Benny isn’t stupid, after all, and if he infers something bigger from Dean’s request to go get the car, then Dean can’t exactly blame him since he hasn’t spilled all the beans himself. He’s _tried_ , and this was to be his latest, greatest attempt at coming clean, but lately it feels like every single one of their conversations is like approaching a steep wall with nothing to hold onto. Benny’s flinty reaction is just too dense for Dean to pierce, and the vampire’s been fairly cool and quiet altogether since the day they went into town. He goes about his daily tasks like a phantom, generally out of sight, brushing contact with Dean throughout the day with a few perfunctory words shared between them, a counterweight in bed at night.

A bitter grey fog obscures the scent that Dean’s grown so comfortable with.

So instead of being forthcoming, Dean meekly replies, “Nah, I’m fine,” and they both go back to their chores.

Dean wakes that night from a dream that made his eyes wet, more from discomfort than fear, a nightmare about that fucking siren, goddamned whatshisname shoving handfuls of raw hamburger down his throat, just like Cas did when Famine got to them all. It’s thick and cold and slimy with grease, and he even spits on the floor as he wakes up. Once his nausea is in check, however, Dean unconsciously rolls over and notices that Benny’s awake and watching him. Relief trickles impulsively over his skin and he tries; he finds Benny’s mouth, mashing their lips together wetly until Benny pries Dean off after about a minute and lays him back down with a quiet insistence that he go back to sleep.

Dean says nothing, does nothing. He lies at the edge of the bed on his side, facing away from Benny and not even their ankles touch for the rest of the night. He doesn’t sleep and he doesn’t mention it in the morning.

Around eleven, he’s getting something to eat and casually notes that Benny has finally dipped into one of the blood bags, his silent protest broken there at least. But then, while buttering a piece of toast with his leg propping open the fridge, Benny comes up behind him, wraps his arms around his wide hips and starts kissing his neck. Arousal lights up around Dean’s waist almost immediately, but there’s more turmoil than need.

Dean twists away, confused, “Okay, what’s going on?”

Benny lets him go, his hands up in surrender, “I…was wondering if you…” he says dumbly, and then drops his hands, “If you want to eat first…”

“No, I mean what’s…what’s this about,” Dean says, “Can’t even look at me these past couple days, won’t even _touch_ me, and _now_ you want to get in my pants?”

“Dean, I just…I thought—”

Dean’s scrutinizing Benny hard, trying to piece together his attitude lately, especially the part where Benny reacted like a ditched date after Dean asked if they could head back down river, and coming up blank until he takes a good, long whiff, and there it is. Something murky and rotting in Benny’s scent that Dean isn’t able to name, but he knows what causes it because he’s felt it crawling deep in his own skin too many times for his own good.

“Wait, hang on. Jesus, Benny,” Dean crosses his arms on top of his belly, the starvation, the silent treatments, the moodiness, and now the incongruent attempt at seduction. _Goddammit_ , “Is this about going back? You think I’m sick of you?”

Benny’s eyes shoot up before Dean’s even finished, “That’s it, then? End of the line?”

“The fuck are you talking about?”

“You and me, it’s —” Benny says haltingly, “It’s okay. I won’t try and follow you to Kansas.”

“You won’t try and…” Dean’s echo dries up when the gravity of the misunderstanding grips him, “What exactly do you _think_ you know, Benny?”

Benny’s next words — his _confession_ — sound so calculated, so controlled, that Dean realizes he’s been holding them in far, far longer than the last couple of days, “I know I’m not your first choice, chief.”

Dean’s stomach drops. He kicks the fridge shut, loud enough that Benny jumps and looks at him with wide eyes. _Good_. He’s paying attention. Not that Dean’s sure of what he plans on doing now that he has it, but when he holds Benny’s stare he sees they’re heavy with unattended misery and loneliness.

A binding ache starts in Dean’s chest, “Don’t…don’t, c’mon. Benny,” he says,

“It’s alright,” Benny smiles thinly, for Dean’s sake of course, “I never expected this to go on. I know what I am, and what this is.”

Benny tries to back off but Dean grabs his hand because he doesn’t know what else to do. He doesn’t know what will work. Dean’s tried fucking his way back into the good books before and _that’s_ never worked out, not with Benny and not with anybody else. Ended up pregnant, in fact. Kissing Benny would only be a distraction, giving into all Benny _thinks_ he is to Dean and ending the conversation. Maybe ending it all.

But he can take Benny’s hands and hold them in his. Not on his belly, because this isn’t just about the baby. Even if there was no baby, Dean can’t think of a person he’d rather be with, can’t think of a single person who makes him feel like _this_ , alpha or not, “You don’t know _what_ this is. _I_ barely know what this is,” he says, “We’re partnered. It’s you and me. That means something,” his mouth goes dry, because the words he wants to say, of course, will solidify what they’ve both been dodging.

“I want you,” Dean croaks, “Okay? Not just for your boat or, or for sex or whatever else you think. It’s not just instinct telling me to shack up with the toughest looking sonofabitch I can find. I want _you_ because you’re awesome and one of the only people who doesn’t…you don’t expect me to be anything other than what I am,” he rambles, still beating around the point but there’s so much that Dean still can’t sum up, but for a brief flash he hears in his own words how cloudedhis thinking has been lately, how his worries about everything else have hijacked his trust in Benny.

“Listen to me. Look at me, Benny,” he pleads.

Benny’s expression is grim when he looks up from their hands. Dean thinks about that night in Carencro after the entire shitastrophe with Martin and Elizabeth.

 _Guys like us, we don’t get a family_.

Dean looks down at their hands, noticing how the sweat buildup is plainly visible so he drops Benny’s hands and wipes his on his shirt, afraid to look up again.

“Are you with me?”

Benny’s stunned silence is just long enough for Dean to begin doubting everything he just said, but when he finally speaks his voice is hoarse, “I know you need time but I need...I need some answers, Dean,” Benny says guiltily, shaking his head like asking for _anything_ is beyond impermissible, “At the very least I have to know where my feet are goin’.”

“Sure, yeah,” Dean replies quickly, “Should’ve told you from the start.”

Benny makes a soothing sound that quiets Dean before he can berate himself further, “I know the last time I said it, I wasn’t nice. But I _am_ with you,” he says, a small lift in his expression, “I want to be.”

“Thanks, Benny. Sorry about, y’know, all of it.”

“You sure know how to throw those curves, don’t you?”

“Heh,” Dean’s palm finds Benny’s neck, and between the two of them they end up wrapped in a hug that seals the deal, as far as Dean’s concerned. His nose burrows into Benny’s shoulder, smothering his anxiety momentarily with the cool, earthy, safety Benny affords. Whatever happens in Kansas, Dean won’t wind up alone this time, “No idea what you’re talkin’ about.”


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Benny had admitted to Dean a long, long time ago in Purgatory that what he knew about omegas could fit into his front pocket, and that most of it that he could recall was a patchy, stitched up and full of holes. It was superstitions, folk beliefs and old wives’ tales of the swampy south from a time gone almost a hundred years.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't think there's enough ways to apologize for taking about ten months to update this. The last chapter drained me, and it did so at a really crappy point in my life so I've been pretty much avoiding this fic since then. But, I'm trying to shake off the need to be a perfectionist and just _accept_ when I've done all that I can with something without losing my mind. With that in mind, any mistakes are my own. 
> 
> This chapter is kind of short, a bit of a come-down from the last. But if all goes well Chapter 9 should be up in...less than ten months :P

Benny had admitted to Dean a long, long time ago in Purgatory that what he knew about omegas could fit into his front pocket, and that most of it that he could recall was a patchy, stitched up and full of holes. It was superstitions, folk beliefs and old wives’ tales of the swampy south from a time gone almost a hundred years. 

Dean, who had been tacitly suggesting he was an alpha up until his suppressants wore off. He went into heat and wasn’t able to pass it off as a simple fever, caught an air of contrition off Benny as he sheepishly described some of his grandma’s methods, passed down for generations, for taming a flighty omega into a mating or blessing a new pregnancy or inducing heat when it physically can’t be. Dean allowed himself to laugh at Benny’s archaic and somewhat precious understanding of it all, but felt compelled to fill Benny in on what science had discovered since ye olden days of herbal poultices and talismans.

Benny accepted Dean’s re-education without prejudice, without correction, without mocking. Maybe it was the exhaustion from just having gone through a horrible heat completely unsatisfied, or maybe he was beginning to warm up to his unlikely traveling companion, but Dean felt safe, for some fucking reason, answering to all of Benny’s misconceptions and questions. His appreciation for the vampire increased five-fold for this alone. Not the escape plan, not the compromise to first find Cas in the dreary maze of trees, but Benny’s slow nod whenever Dean shared what had been a shameful, often dangerous secret about him. He knew that didn’t make a lick of sense, with Benny being not only a vampire, but a biologically null beta, and not even Dean’s mate. But strange bedfellows, right? He was lonely. And loneliness makes a guy crazy.

And Benny seemed eager to listen and learn, just like he was with every other shred of modern living that made its way into their many, many conversations.

“I dunno,” Benny began on yet another dreary afternoon. The sky was grey, the trees a slightly darker grey. Everything was monochrome, pale and drained of colour and life except for the two points of Benny’s eyes, and even those were a bit too silver in the cold gleam of daylight. Not deep, glacial blue, not like Cas, “I dunno if this is a rude question…”

“Ruder than ‘why do vampires poop’?” Dean hacked at a dead looking bush as he passes by, his ax crumpling the brittle twigs like glass and scattering them into the underbrush. He thought he saw or heard something at his two o’clock, ahead of them, but Benny was speaking slowly and walking a few feet behind with no display of having heard a thing. Dean relied on Benny’s hyperaware vampire senses more and more. 

“Guess you set that bar low enough, huh?” Benny laughed, “I was just wonderin’, since I have no way of me ever knowing it, what’s it like goin’ in heat?”

Dean froze, letting Benny catch up to him and then he, too, paused to look back at Dean, well aware that he touched on something sensitive in the human. Dean’s eyes narrowed, glued to the vampire’s as he struggled for an answer that didn’t sound dismissive, because he found he respected Benny’s intentions enough to give him a clue, but also one that didn’t reveal more than Dean was comfortable with, “Um, well. It’s, uh,  _ hot _ . Which I guess you kinda figured. But it’s like...like fire in your blood and your stomach. And all the fun aches and delirium of a fever.”

“And that makes you want to…” 

Dean shook his head and spared Benny’s old fashioned sensibilities, unsure what word Benny would even use to describe what he craves the most when he’s...yeah, “No, it’s...it’s  _ exhausting _ . It completely wipes you out. The last thing you should be doing is fucking anybody,” he said. Benny knew that part. He dealt with Dean sleeping off his three day long heat, pale, corpse-like, shivering, for nearly solid eight hours after the spell broke.

“Sounds uncomfortable.”

“You got no idea, man.”

The silence expanded, and Dean started to walk again, brushed by Benny, and then said:

“You ever hide under a blanket from the monsters under the bed?” Dean asked, and then laughed at Benny’s utterly confused expression, “Right, sorry. But I mean, when you’re a kid,” Dean added, “You hide under the blankets because you hear something out there. Then you get all light-headed and hot, and all you want is some fresh air but you’re afraid of the monsters seeing you, and you’re of afraid of what they’ll do to you if you try to breathe again.”

“I have a hard time imagining you hiding from monsters.”

Dean shrugged, “Hey, I was a kid once. What I’m getting at is, eventually, you feel like you’re suffocating. Hell, I guess you sort of are. And you just stop thinking straight and don’t care what gets you, what hurts you, if you can just pull the blanket off your head and breathe.”

Another pause, Dean started to bite his lip nervously because he stepped over the threshold of what he deemed acceptable to share, but then Benny simply repeated, “Sounds uncomfortable.”

Dean laughed, “It is.”

Of course, the one thing he could never explain to a beta was the one thing that remained a point of contention for them throughout the next few months because of the direct effect it had on their exodus from Purgatory: Cas was out there, and Dean needed to find him.

“So, he’s your mate?”

Dean’s foot dragged through a small tangle of moss hiding a pile of picked-clean bones. He kicked away an old, cracked femur with disgust and stared straight ahead, eyes on the grey-green vortex of leaves and branches, “Yes. I mean. No. Not yet.”

“Not yet?”

“He is, though,” Dean repeated with unusual certainty, chuckling half to himself and half to hopefully show off to Benny how easy this was, how funny it was that Benny, wise and knowledgeable in his own peculiar ways, couldn’t understand something as simple as finding your mate. Betas don’t have this problem. Betas get a choice.

And so the laugh was thin, and put a painful twinge in Dean’s throat like he’d swallowed something the wrong way, “I mean, how much shit can you go through with one guy before you just go ‘fine, he’s the one’?” His voice came out taut with desperation.

Benny tilted his head to the side, someone else’s blood dried brown in the coarse hair of his beard, and replied distantly, “Guess it depends what kind of shit.”

—

Dean washes his face in the small kitchen sink and digs his fingers into the creases around his nose and mouth to scrub out the built up sweat, salt, and the ubiquitous filth that seems to find him no matter how diligently he avoids anything dirty. Could be he just feels dirty, like he’s constantly caked in a layer of outer grime. In fact, it’s everything, not just him, that feels like it needs to be scrubbed down and tidied and ordered and—

_ God _ , Dean leans his full weight into the counter. It creaks. He watches the grey water swirl down the drain,  _ I’m nesting.  _

The evening crept up on them but the heat from the day, familiar and oppressive, sticks around and so Dean’s been wandering the houseboat without purpose for hours while Benny got them turned around on the river and headed back south. His pant legs rolled up, feet swollen to what looks like twice their normal size and won’t fit in his boots  _ or  _ his flip-flops, he tried to occupy his mind with mindless tasks like organizing and reorganizing the cupboards, taking down an inventory of the canned goods aboard, darning all of Benny’s socks because, Jesus, every single one of his socks has at least one hole.

Whatever he does, he firmly keeps his mind off the raw, flayed feeling that creeps up the back of his neck, like something vital has been exposed and the only way to protect it is to pretend that it’s not there.

After all his busywork and housewifery has run out, he paces. And he ignores all of Benny’s pleas to  _ sit down, Dean _ and  _ Take a break, brother, before you walk a trench in the deck. _

After their confrontation earlier, Dean hadn’t wanted to touch what he just barely salvaged there, which means he hasn’t talked about the truth that’s been slowly crushing them both for months. Not yet, but it’s coming, and Benny allows him that space to settle his thoughts which Dean is thankful for, if worried that, given unlimited time to sort himself out, he might never speak again. But when the sun finally drops below the horizon and the starless darkness closes in on them, all Dean can focus on as he meanders about is the pervasive nothingness outside this tiny boxed home. There’s no wind, but Dean feels the lap and roll of water heaving beneath the boat and he hears the trees shuffling on the banks. And yet, he sees nothing. He knows nothing of where they are or what’s ahead. They’re floating on a rickety old boat through the darkness, towards more darkness, and there’s only darkness behind him.

He heads into to the small bedroom and sits down on the floor with his back to the mattress because his legs don’t want to do what he says anymore.  _ Just like that _ , he muses and stares at the fingers on his left hand, the bones of his knuckles painfully stark in the blueish light of the bug lamp,  _ it gets dark and, boom, just like that _ .

He can’t do anything now but ride it and hang on. His surroundings crash down around his ears, a slow cave in caused by — _ what now _ , he has no fucking clue, no fucking way of figuring it out. He’s not afraid of the dark, no way. But the…the  _ nothing _ …that was his last thought before he…

It’s Castiel’s piercing blue eyes, corners sad and weary, the only thing that registers through the clanging bells in Dean’s head as he kneels on the floor. Everything else is numb and murky, uncertain where the parts of his body are, if they’re even still a part of him or if this is what slow death is like. Really, he can only ever remember dying quickly: heart ripped to shreds by claws or a shotgun blast, unconsciousness or shock taking his senses before it’s actually over. This, though. This is just gradually going dark from the pain and fear. Uncertainty, each second slipping by and each one more terrifying so he’s reduced to a single, frantic word.

_ No. _

“Dean?”

His fingertips throb painfully. He can feel the pulse in his thumb on his lips and the salt of blood in his mouth. He examines it, cataloguing it as a minor annoyance in the big picture, but one that’s gonna sting like a bitch whenever he washes his hands for the next few days. The skin around his nail is torn and red from chewing. Two more fingers are bleeding up from the nail bed. 

“You’re hurting yourself.”  _ Benny.  _

Dean’s mouth moves slow and clumsy “It’s no big deal.”

Benny kneels on the floor between Dean’s splayed legs. At the hollow sound of Dean’s voice, he loosens his grip on Dean’s wrist and slides his fingers down so they interlock with Dean’s, “You were washing your face and then you just…I thought you were just off to bed but then I smelled…” he shakes his head and fixes Dean with a sorrowful expression, “Chief, it was like you were  _ hypnotized _ or something and I...there’s got to be some band-aids around here...”

“Don’t worry about it,” Dean assures him again. Benny is still holding his hand, blood filling the cuticles. The thought registers like a firefly blinking along a dotted line path, too difficult to follow.

“I do worry,” Benny replies, “I worry a lot.”

Dean shakes his head, frustrated, mostly, that he can’t grasp what led him to this. It’s there. It’s right in front of him, he knows it but…

“What was it?”

“Fuck if I know.”

“Was it,” Benny licks his lip, looks tentative, “was it about Castiel?”

The name in Benny’s accent is so bizarre that Dean has half a mind to tell Benny to keep on calling him  _ hot wings _ or  _ angelface _ or  _ featherbrain _ whatever else he can think of, anything but the actual name. Anything but the cold, chime-like syllables that ring like a warning in Dean’s ears. 

But, instead of that, something completely different flies from his lips before he can take hold of his own thoughts again. 

“You were right about Cas.”

Benny’s eyebrows go up in faint surprise. He hadn’t expected Dean to respond to his question, and then his face scrunches in confusion because,  _ yeah, right about what part? _

“Never mind,” Dean sighs. His eyes fall back down to their hands. He grips tight around Benny’s meaty fingers, unwilling to let go just yet. He closes his eyes.

“Hey, don’t leave me again…” Benny says and shifts his weight so he’s right in the centre of Dean’s field of vision when he looks up again. Benny’s expression is taut with helpless concern.

“I won’t. I just,” Dean curves sharply back to reality and glances over Benny’s round shoulder and through to the bathroom, the small window nothing but a black rectangle. More night sounds fill the air with hums and chirps and clicks, “I’m not very good at figuring out why this happens.”

“You mentioned Cas—”

“I know,” Dean snaps, and then there’s more words coming down like an avalanche, “I know, okay? I’ve accepted it. I know that even if there’s some cosmic or biological predestination shit forcing me at Cas, it’s not a good match. It’s over,” he concludes savagely. Benny’s expression remains perplexed, all of this coming out of nowhere to him but Dean has been  _ thinking _ about it. Remembering, sifting through his memories and his nightmares like a man searching frantically for what he knows is already gone. 

Then something tears from him in that moment, the kite string keeping him grounded to the immovable truth he held onto for years. The fighting and the pain and the predictable unpredictability of his  _ thing _ with Cas, his  _ profound bond _ , it used to be his anchor, it used to be his truth, his certainty. But now…now everything has changed. The bond isn’t severed, but Dean is  _ un _ certain. He wants more and he isn’t sure if he should, or if he even can, given how he’s shifted his devotions to Benny and it still hasn’t stopped him from freaking out.

“I just don’t know why I keep going all Terminator on myself. It’s like I’m being punished for saving my own skin.”

Benny looks away from the blood smudged on Dean’s fingers, the contact with his. Courtesy, resistance, Dean’s couldn’t say, what draws Benny’s eyes away from hit but whatever he is uncertain of, whatever scares him, he knows he’s not afraid of this.

“I don’t know. I don’t think it’s that simple.”

“Well, I sure can’t avoid talking about the bastard for the rest of my life, I know that much,” Dean sags and falls back against the bed with Benny still between his knees. His breath comes out in frustrated pants, now, hot and angry, but drained of energy, “What happens if my kid is like, the spitting image of him? Or even if it has his eyes or his mouth or that stupid frown? Am I supposed to just never look at them? Not talk to them?” his voice rises with hysteria, “Or should I just start flipping out like this every time they do that little head tilt thing?

“Don’t go thinkin’ like that.”

“Thinking like what?” Dean spits.

“That what you’ve been through makes you unfit to raise a child,” Benny says, “It doesn’t.”

Dean starts to laugh despite the anger and fear sitting just below his ribcage like a coiled snake, “Say it does. Say you’re wrong and I’m right, for once. If I keep this kid, if I want this  _ out _ to be a father, am I being a selfish asshole?”

“Am I selfish for being with you?”

“You know that’s not even close to the same thing. I have a say in that. I  _ chose _ you. The baby…” Dean looks down at his stomach and self-consciously tugs his shirt over the exposed stretch marks, “This kid is counting on me to make the right choice. And you and I know I have a history of making the  _ wrong _ one.”

Benny doesn’t respond right away, just stares at Dean’s belly and then pulls Dean’s gaze up with his own, lips slightly parted. One hand still clasped in Dean’s, the other on his thigh. The stillness is so confusingly peaceful between them now that Dean doesn’t try to turn away or pull himself back from Benny’s soft attention. 

“What I told you this morning, I meant that. Right choice, wrong choice, I’m with you, no matter what, “he says slowly, “It’s not just because of your good looks,” the corners of  his eyes crinkle when Dean snorts, “I believe in you. That’s what I meant.”

Dean flexes his fingers in acceptance of Benny’s words, but his chest constricts with the one question to which he knows Benny won’t have a solid answer.

_ Is it enough? _


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean lifts the tarp off, careful to fling the accumulated dust away from the dulled black body of the Impala but his fingers leave streaks in the layer of grime coating the car’s paint job anyhow. He sheepishly murmurs, “Sorry, baby,” and wipes a messy circle in the driver’s side window.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **warning:** brief reference to abortion.
> 
> I promise this is the last chapter of dawdling. Things will come back to the season 8 plot pretty soon :)

****_“Kevin, I need an update. Call me ASAP or get Sam to call me. Thanks, kid.”_

_“Still waiting for you to let me know what’s going on, Kevin. Call me.”_

_“Kevin, I need you to stop downloading anime porn for fourteen seconds and check your goddamn messages. And, Sam, if you’re still the—.”_

_“—Messages full.”_

“Shit,” Dean mutters softly and rests the edge of his cell phone against his down-turned lips. As he looks into the grey-green water that breaks over the worn stern of the boat, he tries to count backwards in his head from twenty but stops at eleven. A cold pressure out of nowhere stalls his breathing the last of his air explodes in a another curse, “Fucking…dammit.”

“Dean?” he hears Benny call from inside, “Any luck?”

The wave of nausea laps higher and higher the longer Dean stares at the frothing river until he can feel it at his esophagus, so he swallows hard, does the smart thing and teeters away from the railing of the boat. His head swims through a fog but he follows the sound of Benny’s voice and keeps his grip tight on the metal bar with one hand. The other hands sits atop the hump of his stomach and small periodic blips and burps in his gut tell him the baby has the hiccups, again. Seems to get those a lot, and Dean can’t imagine how annoying that must be suspended in fluid so he rubs his stomach soothingly to try and calm the spasms.

When he reaches Benny’s side, Benny takes a hand off the wheel for a moment to — rather needlessly — help Dean take a seat on the single step that separates the cockpit from the rest of the room. He sits heavily with his legs spread to accommodate the girth of his stomach, still rubbing circles around his protruding belly button.

Dean tries to avoid looking, but he sees Benny raises a questioning eyebrow anyhow.

“No luck,” he grunts.

Benny frowns sympathetically. One hand reaches behind him to cover Dean’s knee and the other fiddles with a knob on the control panel. His touch is casual and easy. Dean finds his eyes drawn to the thick ridges of Benny’s knuckles, “Try not to worry about it, chief.”

“Sure,” Dean voice snaps like a dry twig, “He only might be dead.”

“He’s not.”

Benny’s reassurance is straightforward and calm, as always, and that only manages to stoke Dean’s cynicism. Castiel, they can both agree on, is a dick. But Sam is a different story. Sam is more complicated in Dean’s mind. But Benny doesn’t exactly care for Sam, and Dean can’t really blame him since his sweet baby brother tried to have the vampire killed, so what’s it matter to him if Sam is safe or not? Benny’s life would become a hell of a lot safer if Sam got himself killed. And so Dean wonders if some part of Benny is _hoping_ that Sam is dead.

The thought spins in his head, hot and angry and he wants to ask Benny right then and there. But then Benny squeezes his knee. Dean deflates himself.

“Until I hear his voice I’m not—I can’t…”

Benny looks back at Dean. He keeps his eyes averted and tightens his jaw to control the shaking, but the only thing it accomplishes is a muscle-deep ache that twinges through his entire body in reply to the hiccuping in his stomach. Without a word, Benny adjusts something on the board, and then comes to sit next to Dean on the step. Dean keeps his eyes closed, trying to level out his temper so he doesn’t bark at Benny again.

“Sorry,” Dean croaks, “Didn’t mean to…I’m not mad at you.”

“I know,” Benny replies, his voice barely audible, “I know it ain’t easy for you.”

“Just…after everything, if something happened to Sam the one time I’m not there because I let all _this_ happen,” Dean points to his belly, and huffs a derisive laugh.

Benny bumps Dean’s shoulder with his, “Hey, you said it yourself. Sam’s smart. He’s tough. And dangerous. He knows how to keep himself alive,” he says.

Dean doesn’t bother trying to explain the sickness that creeps around his insides whenever he imagines Sam hunting alone without him. Or worse, with Kevin. Sure, he told Benny that Sam is a deadly motherfucker with a nearly sadistic drive to eliminate any and all threats, but that doesn’t alter the truth in which Sam is reckless as much as he is ruthless. What it comes down to, and what wraps Dean up so tight with worry that he can barely think, is that no matter how many times Sam insists he can take care of himself without Dean around to watch his back, the reality is that his track record isn’t spectacular. He tends towards destruction, of himself or others.

And it was fine when it was Dean and Sam, together. _Both feet in or both feet out._ There were no pinky swears or spitty palms or whatever the fuck else, but Dean broke a promise. He betrayed Sam. That was their life and come hell, high water, veterinarians, or vampires, they prioritized the job and their family, before anything else, even if it only made them miserable and lonely. Even if it led them both down the darkest paths, they would go together.

_But what about a baby_? He couldn’t ask that. Never. That wasn’t his life, and the only reason he was facing it now was because he was weak and stupid. He’d suffered Sam’s critical, bitter, sideways glances and the silent treatment for a few weeks after it became obvious what had happened, also a few weeks after they’d promised to stick together. But when Sam finally seemed to settle down and elected to talk about it, each discussion only turned Dean’s stomach more.

_It’s a super common procedure, Dean. And completely safe if you go to the right place. Forget about all that Westboro bullshit, man. Your body, your choice._

_Right._

_I mean it, man. You of all people don’t have to feel bad about it. I think I heard once that a fetus doesn’t even develop a real consciousness until, like, the third trimester._

Dean told Sam he’d find time to make an appointment. A week and a bit later, he was on his knees in Lucifer’s crypt, shielding his slightly rounded stomach with a broken wrist, buzzing with fear and betrayal and straining to find that tiny spark of life within him, the thing that mattered most to him in that moment. The thing that would keep him fighting for months to come and permanently alter his perspective of himself and the life he’d been stuck in.

In a way, then, Dean sometimes wonders how much of a stroke of luck it all was. If he hadn’t proven how weak he was with Castiel and gotten pregnant, would Castiel have stopped in the crypt at all? Irony, man.

He turns his head, his eyes level with Benny’s cheek so he can gaze up at him through his eyelashes.

This, he thinks, at least, is clearer to him now. The silences and pauses that fill the moments when Dean doesn’t know what to say or how to say it are less condemning than they were, but the feeling that he’s somehow hurting Benny by keeping his thoughts to himself persists like an infection. The effort for Dean to be open with him is like trying to dig through a mountain and Dean’s started to tell him about the things that have happened since Purgatory, but the sharing is slow and difficult. Breakthroughs are few and far between and every so often Dean hits something and causes a rockslide.

But so far, Dean still hasn’t caught a single hint that his trust in Benny is yet another mistake. The vampire understands what he does about Dean and waits on the things he doesn’t to come into focus, hanging onto a faith that they eventually will. His patience, more than anything, creates a solid layer coursing below Dean’s turbulent emotions, perpetually keeping him aloft and moving forward.

“I just want to get back to Kansas. That way I’ll know what’s going on.”

Benny nods, “But it ain’t gonna do any good if I let you die from worry before we even make it back, will it?”

Dean forces himself to smile, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. Benny shouldn’t have to be responsible for Dean’s well-being as much as Dean shouldn’t be responsible for his, or Sam’s, for that matter. What’s important, what has gravity, he tries to remind himself, is that they both want to be responsible for it despite that.

He chose Benny. Benny chose him. A simple equation, or so it should be.

“What’s your plan?”

Benny smirks crookedly and pulls his cap lower to shield his face from the orange sun setting over the colourless surface of the river, “Full steam ahead.”

—

The garage smells dusty and noxious, like gasoline, old paint, and wood chips. Sun streams in between the boarded walls and heats the blend of smells to the point of suffocation. If the air inside weren’t so thick with the summer humidity and the faint fishiness from the nearby gulf, Dean could close his eyes, fix his mind’s eye on the afterimage of light leaking through the gaps in the wood slats, and imagine he’s back at Sonny’s, the man himself is showing Dean how to fix the axle on the tractor.

He opens his eyes again and coughs on the sticky air, settles his gaze on the dusty grey tarped figure. He’s lost track of the days, the minutes and hours compressed by the low, meandering panic he shoved away countless times. He knows Benny got them here in good time, though, keeping on through the nights while Dean slept to return to the place they’d left months ago. Dean’s suspicions about how much Benny truly cares for Sam’s continued breathing haven’t totally evaporated, but Benny, unlike anybody Dean has ever known in his life, doesn’t let it interfere with his feelings for Dean.

He lifts the tarp off, careful to fling the accumulated dust away from the dulled black body of the Impala but his fingers leave streaks in the layer of grime coating the car’s paint job anyhow. He sheepishly murmurs, “Sorry, baby,” and wipes a messy circle in the driver’s side window. A flat reflection stares back at him; the exhausted sag around his eyes ages him beyond his thirty-five years and the mound of his stomach is distorted by the curve of the glass. He’s well used to his reflection by now, the large belly, the softened cheeks and jawline, the swollen everything, but it feels off-centre, skewed and unreal in the Impala’s window.

Dean stills, one hand palming the hot roof of the car and the other smoothing circles around his bellybutton, as he tries to churn up in the yawning pit of his stomach some sense of familiarity and comfort, something to reconnect pieces that don’t fit together as they should.

He pulls the handle. The door with a slow, torturous creak.

The interior of the car smells like the barn, woody and old with the usual cocktail of hot leather and gunpowder beneath it all. The detached feeling doesn’t abate when when he sits back on the warm upholstery, but when he turns the ignition she purrs her greeting as if he never abandoned her in the dusty, gloomy dark in the first place. Dean’s seatbelt pulls over his stomach like a bitter complaint as a stupid brand of guilt spills over in him that he can’t muster a similar enthusiasm at the pleased growling that vibrates beneath him.

Dean’s attention is drawn from his own feelings as he sees Benny climbing into the passenger seat of the car, smiling ruefully at how uncomfortable the vampire seems now that he’s voluntarily land-locking himself for an undetermined amount of time. Benny set anchor somewhere inland; they worked together to clean up and close up, and left her to bob on the waves until God knows when.

Without speaking, Benny unfolds himself back against the leather like he’s unsure of how to position himself, and he reaches behind to move the cooler of blood bags from the floor to the seat and then back to the floor again. At some point, he jumps in his seat as he remembers to buckle himself in.

Dean smirks softly at that and pulls out of the large barn door and onto the gravel road.

It opens up before them. The trees part almost reverently for them at the sides of the rough road and when they finally hit pavement, Dean pushes his foot down on the accelerator, holds his breath, grips the vibrating wheel and waits for that _feeling_ , that familiar and wild exhilaration to stir in his chest.

When it doesn’t, he exhales and stares ahead with dead eyes. The hood chews up the lines on the road, the occasional kachunk in the pavement jostles his foot on the gas.

“You sure you don’t want me to drive?” Benny asks, after a long, predatory silence. They’re both uncomfortable, and it circles them like a vulture, waiting for one of them to drop first.

Dean slides his hand down the side of the steering wheel, “No. I’m fine,” he says, monotonous. The tires glide beneath them like water, smooth and sublime, but Dean grips the wheel tighter and bites the inside of his bottom lip.

“Something wrong with her?”

Dean cracks a tense smile. Only Benny could really understand the way Dean personifies the car. Sam criticized him, thought it was kind of crass (“ _It’s sexist and archaic, Dean_ ”). But Benny was on the same level as Dean. Benny knew the spirit of his old boat the way Dean knows the personality of his car. And the fact that he asks about _her_ now, it’s like he’s asking Dean about a favourite relative.

But now, Dean finds his own translation of _her_ slipping, like he’s woken up from a dream and realized how fucking weird it actually all is.

Then, he shakes his head.

It’s still the Impala. Still his baby. She hasn’t changed in a couple months.

“No. The car’s fine. Could use a tune-up sometime but nothing major,” Dean says blankly, “Just feels…I don’t know,” he sighs, and then breathes a laugh, “I’m just being an idiot,” and Benny clucks his tongue at him in disapproval, “Not like _that_. Chill out.”

“Just don’t like hearing you put yourself down.”

Dean grin quivers at that, but he rolls his eyes to hide it, “This one time, when I was living with...with _Lisa_ ,” he begins, checking to make sure Benny nods in recognition. He’s spoken about the Braedens only once or twice with him, he thinks and the tone of those short conversations had never been inviting or open to any further curiosity, “We went to a movie. Ben was old enough and Lisa wanted him to start being more responsible, so we left him to finish his homework and put himself to bed. But when we got back,” Dean pauses, drawing out a silence in which he dusts off some of the memories that he deliberately shut away. The images are clear, cherished, nonetheless, “Something was wrong. The entire living room felt...it felt like something was wrong. And I started to get --” Dean stops and smiles sheepishly. That was when Lisa found out about the devil’s trap under the doormat, because as soon as Dean sensed something amiss, he flipped the mat over to check the lines, “Lisa figured it out right away. She just shoved the couch back a foot towards the wall, and there was this giant orange salsa stain on the beige carpet.”

“This is about the car?”

Dean refocuses. The road is empty before them, the sun setting in the west, long shadows reaching across the road like bars on a cage. The sound of Lisa’s laugh dies down in his mind  and he tries adjusting the back of the seat so he’s sitting a little straighter. No dice. It just puts a super uncomfortable pressure on his already sensitive bladder, “Yeah.”

“Hm.”

“Man, never mind.”

“No, no I think I get it,” Benny replies, and Dean calls bullshit but then Benny turns his head and smiles crookedly at him, “I know what’s wrong with you.”

Dean waits for him to say more, something illuminating, desperate for a clue, but when he makes a face for Benny to spit it out already, the vampire’s smile breaks even wider.

“It’s the sea. She got her hooks in you, and now she won’t let go,” Benny says gutturally and starts to chuckle, and then declares, “Ahoy, swabbie.”

The exaggerated pirate accent shocks a laugh out of Dean, because, yeah, sure. He’ll miss the peaceful isolation of Benny’s boat, the relaxing days, the mornings where he could wake up past nine and spend an hour touching and kissing Benny with zero destination and the warm nights where his tossing and turning is softened by the cool body next to him. The days wasted reading books and fixing old electronics he’d picked up at pawn shops.

It was strangely blissful, despite the understanding that it was not a permanent state. Dean’s future could never remain on that boat.

And they both know, with mild certainty, that it can’t remain on the road like this, either.

—

They stop at the same 24 hour diner they met up at two months ago, Gretchen’s, and walk in at two in the morning, order a plate of fries, a large salad, and a bowl of ice cream. Dean devours the meal ravenously and then chugs a glass of iced tea and then a glass of water. He pretends to take a moment to appreciate the overall cleanliness of the small restaurant, but fights a warm blush as, beneath the table, Benny slides his foot up and down Dean’s calf. Dean yammers about his favourite diners, ranked by service, bathrooms, and pie, and while he knows Benny well enough to understand that he means nothing by the slow drag up his leg, when they head back out to the car after generously tipping their tired waitress, Dean takes the car down an empty side street and kills the engine.

He leans back and unbuckles his seatbelt.

“Dean, what’s wr—”

“Back seat,” he orders sternly. After an entire day of driving, after an entire _week_ of worrying his head off, the last thing he’s up for is any form of physical exertion but back at the diner, as he stuffed his face with grease and sugar, his mind was gradually released from the gripping headache for as long as it took him to eat all thirty dollars worth of diner grub, with the help of Benny’s mindless footsy under the table.

Now, he needs something else to distract him from the encroaching misery creeping back over him like a mudslide.

Benny stares at Dean, speechless for a moment, and then roars with laughter. His voice booms throughout the interior of the car, “You’re serious?”

“Dead serious,” Dean unbuttons his pants and tries to work them down while still sitting in the driver’s seat. He gets them stuck around his hips, the waist digging into his flesh painfully. Benny, chuckling, puts his hands over Dean’s and squeezes his fingers, but he doesn’t go near Dean’s crotch. He’s not helping. _Fuck_ . If anything, Dean swears Benny’s trying to get a grip on this situation and deny Dean something that he _wants_ so bad it’s gonna kill him in the next five minutes.

Dean’s mouth pulls hard into a grimace, his face hot and tingly, “What are you _—_ let me go.”

“Hey, easy, sugar,” Benny whispers as he releases Dean's hands, “I just don’t know if this is such a good idea.”

“Don’t be an ass,” But Dean’s voice is soggy and tight. He follows Benny as he draws away from Dean, “C’mon, Benny,” he kisses into Benny’s mouth, clumsy, fingers wandering and dipping low enough to drag a small shiver from Benny. The reaction reflects in Dean and he whimpers softly. Too much space between them. The console presses Dean's stomach painfully and Benny knows it. But, still, Benny stubbornly resists Dean’s attempts to get into his pants. _Goddammit, Benny. Just be_ that _kind of asshole for once._

Benny sighs theatrically and touches Dean's ear. His fingers are icy.

Stupid fucking betas and their stupid ambivalence to omega pheromones, “Seriously, man, when will you trust me again?”

Benny balks, “I _do_ trust you,” his tone uncharacteristically sharp enough that Dean winces. Of course he does, and Dean feels like shit for doubting that Benny trusts him with his life. They’re heading right into the middle of the country where Dean’s brother, if he’s alive, may or may not be waiting for them, machete at his side, “I just don’t...I don’t wanna tell you what you need but I…”

Right. Of course. Benny’s a vampire, not a mind reader, but he knows enough about what makes Dean tick, knows what kinds of stunts Dean has pulled to avoid certain things before. 

Dean slaps the steering wheel and spits, “I fucking hate this.”

“I know.”

“And I have to fucking piss.”

He can’t look at Benny. His eyes won’t go that way, not that he wants to, so he puts his pants back on and heads back into the diner to use their washroom without so much as looking back at the car. The waitress greets him again, a somewhat troubled smile on her face as he hurries into the single occupant bathroom.

When he’s finished, he scrubs his hands with a thin, grey bar of soap and stares at his reflection in the rust-flecked mirror. His cheeks are full, but pasty, and he’s wide-eyed like he’s been running for his life. The purple bruises beneath give him a haunted look, and exhaustion pulls down the corners of his mouth.

This is what Benny sees. This is what the waitress sees. This terrified, exhausted, half-deranged expression of single-minded self preservation.

When he returns, Benny is sitting with his hands folded over his lap.

After an awkward silence in which Dean chugs a half a bottle of water and leans back in his seat, the nausea rolling around his insides making him regret it immediately. He starts up the car again, the stuttering roar hiding the sound of Dean swallowing down the bile in his mouth.

“Dean?” Benny’s voice is quiet.

Dean stares ahead and turns up the AC. He grunts, “Let’s just go.”


End file.
